 "Photo: Courtesy of Tom Angerame")
A volleyball drives over the net to the center of the court where sophomore Tom Angerame slides into position, receives the serve and sets his team up with a scoring opportunity.
It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago he was in a wheelchair, barely able to withstand the duration of a volleyball match at his alma mater Buffalo Grove high school, where in 2008, he led them to a second place finish in the state competition — unsure of whether he would be able to return to his beloved sport, he cheered his former team on to a third place finish in 2009.
This past year, the 19-year-old Angerame recieved a procedure to correct his asymmetrical chest wall that required the breaking of almost every bone in his thoracic region. Doctors inserted a stainless steel bar nto his chest that will stay in place for the next two-and-a-half to three years. He could not be physical again until May of 2010.
Less than a year post-op, Angerame is back on the court for Loyola’s men’s volleyball club team. One would be hard pressed to recognize the pain in his step or see all of the work he put in to be able to stand at the net, but the fact that he is playing — and playing well — is a testament to his inner strength as well as his skills on the court.
To explain where he is today, Angerame insists on starting when he was young.
“I was born with a concave chest. I had a surgery [Ravtich procedure] to fix it when I was seven, and of that surgery, three percent of people who receive it fail. Of course I would be one of that three percent,” Angerame said.
Because of this surgery and its complications, Angerame had to mold his athletic career around what his body allowed him to do.
“I couldn’t really play soccer. I just couldn’t keep up with the endurance and basketball was the same way. So when my brother introduced me to volleyball, that kind of sprouted me into it … junior high, club and high school,” Angerame added.
The way his chest was growing his lungs were severely affected; and, in about seventh or eighth grade, his parents intervened when they discovered he had about half the lung capacity he should have at his age, said his mother Noel Angerame.
“[Volleyball] was something he could do with his limitations. He always pushed himself beyond, training and jumping boxes. If he could put his body on a stretcher, I think he would have,” Noel Angerame said.
“I wasn’t planning on playing [volleyball] in college, but I was approached during nationals to be recruited to Ball State,” Angerame said. “I had only committed, applied to one school, that was here [Loyola], and once I got in, my mind was kind of set until this offer came. It took me most of the summer to think about it and weigh the pros and cons and I ended up committing to [Ball State].”
The very next day at his annual check up, his doctors took some numbers and evaluated stress tests from the past year. They said Angerame’s chest was displacing his heart. The doctors said he would require another surgery during his athletic years. Because of bone maturation, when he became older and less active his chest wall would decrease, along with his pulmonary function and overall lung capacity.
“I made the decision, instead of going to Ball State for a year, playing and then having the surgery. I decided just for continuities’ sake, I would come here [to Loyola] get a biology degree en route to getting it [the surgery] done the summer before my sophomore year,” Angerame said.
“That was the hardest thing for him to do: call that coach at Ball State and tell him he wasn’t coming,” Noel Angerame said.
He played a full year for the Loyola men’s club volleyball team before his scheduled surgery, which was two days after his last final as a freshman. After consultations with medical centers from UCLA to the surgeon who developed the Nuss procedure he would require, Angerame and his family decided to use the physician with the most experience in performing this surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
“I wasn’t expecting an easy recovery,” said Angerame. When they opened up his chest, they discovered that the surgery was going to be much more complex than they originally expected. Angerame’s chest wall had grown abnormally — his upper torso had not grown as much as the lower and his ribs had overgrown his sternum.
The doctor was forced to then separate each rib and its cartilage and completely reconstruct his upper body with a series of wires. The concave metal bar, part of the original procedure, inserted and flipped, breaking open his pulmonary cavity.
Bedridden for a month, Angerame was unable to even feed himself when he first returned home, his mother said. He droped 25 lbs. in the two weeks following the surgery, but as soon as his body allowed him to walk, he pushed to build up his endurance and rebuild muscle tone.
He was unsure of whether or not he would return to school in the fall of 2009, because he still could not even raise his arms and was in constant pain. Against his grandmother’s and parents’ wishes, he returned to the university. He scaled back to 13 credit hours, but his injury couldn’t keep him away from the volleyball court and Angerame returned to a coaching role for the club, while he worked daily on his rehabilitation and physical therapy. On Dec. 24, 2009 Angerame was named to the Pioneer Press All-Lake Shore All-Decade team 2000-2009 for volleyball. He was listed third.
“I was seriously questioning if I’d ever be able to play volleyball again. The Pioneer Press article gave me that last kick to commit to getting back on the volleyball court,” Angerame said.
A month after coming back to playing competitive volleyball, nearly six months ahead of where his doctors expected him to be physically, Angerame is still learning his limitations.
“We have a couple of ringers now,” president of Loyola’s men’s volleyball club senior Kyle Pearson said, referring to the return of Angerame as one of them. No longer just a leader off of the court Angerame can now act as the example on it.
“I’m not at full strength,” said Angerame adding that he has trouble playing and coaching his teammates on the court because his body still isn’t fully conditioned.
The club has already won their first two contests since his return, defeating both Lewis and UIC in four sets, 3-1 each time, for a 2-0 record to start this semester. Nineteen days before Angerame’s 20th birthday, he will travel with the club to the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation Collegiate Club Volleyball Championships in Louisville, Ky., for the chance to bring home national honors once again.
“I think that [volleyball] is the only thing that got me back to school, got me healthy by November and got me physically able to handle physical activity by January,” Angerame said.
Now, even the doctors are telling him that he needs to play volleyball because, unless he stays active and does his rehab, Angerame will have a never-ending fight with scar tissue that he will eventually lose if he doesn’t. Without combating the scarring, he would risk losing potential lung function which could himself back further than where he was before the surgery.
“He never once complained, never shed a tear and never once said ‘Why me?’ He took it and dealt with it and looked at it positively,” Noel Angerame said.
In a year, a lot can change in a person’s life. Just ask Tom Angerame.
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