Transplant looms, but Crockett plays on
For a while this winter, it didn’t look like Jane Crockett would be a part of San Tan Valley Poston Butte girls soccer team.
The junior defender spent 27 days in Phoenix Children’s Hospital, 17 of those days in the ICU. She was intubated for five days. During her hospital stay, doctors discovered the 16-yearold’s liver was in chronic rejection.
She did not have COVID-19, after being tested six times in the hospital for it.
Pneumonia had festered for so long that it caused her to be intubated. It was during that treatment that the rejection was discovered, 15 years after she underwent a liver transplant as a small child.
But the day she was released from the hospital, she talked to her soccer coach and told him she was ready to play.
“Totally determined,” coach
Sale said. “She’s a fighter.”
Crockett not only made the two-mile qualifying run to join the team, but, she said, “I beat everybody’s times.”
She currently is working her way up from the junior varsity team, gradually regaining her strength and stamina to be part of the varsity team’s run at a playoff spot as a tough-as-nails defender.
“I didn’t want to miss out on my junior year,” Crockett said. “I want to play all four years and maybe get moved up to varsity.”
Crockett keeps an inhaler in her pocket on the field. Occasionally, she needs to use it when she’s running quite a bit. But she’s not letting this latest setback hold her back.
Sports is therapeutic
Dean
A cross-country runner, Crockett was sad she had to miss the state meet in the fall and the original soccer tryouts.
“She was a little bit depressed, because she was like, ‘I missed my soccer tryouts, I missed cross-country,’ “said Erin Crockett, Jane’s mom. “So when Coach Sale said, ‘You still have a chance to tryout. You just need to complete that run.’ She was excited and she got back that fire.”
Soccer, being around teammates, is therapeutic for Crockett. Running has always been an escape. And going from cross-country to soccer to track and field have given her an outlet she has always wanted since she was old enough to run.
But she nearly didn’t make her second birthday.
Fifteen years ago in February, she underwent a liver transplant. At nine months old, Jane was discovered to have a genetic disorder called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. The only sign she had was a hard extended belly, Erin said.
it to see
“After a week’s worth of testing, they finally did the liver biopsy, and found that she was in the final stages of liver failure,” Erin said. “It’s a silent killer. They weren’t surprised that they found that. But we waited a year for the transplant.”
It was a bittersweet moment when her liver arrived.
“You have this guilt of somebody out there just lost their child, and mine has a second life,” Erin said. “It was celebration but grieving for that family that just lost their child.”
How long did it take for her to recover from that 12-hour transplant surgery?
“Two days,” Jane said without hesitating.
Jane does not recall her liver transplant, only the stories her mother has told her as she got older.
“She was jumping up on the bed a week after transplant,” Erin said. “It never really held her back. Even though she’s immunocompromised and catches sickness easier, we’ve never lived in that bubble. It’s not a way to live for us.
We still let her do everything she can possibly do and treat her as a normal kid.”
There were a few setbacks over the last 15 years, but nothing that couldn’t be resolved by taking medication, Erin said.
“She has lived a healthy, normal 15 years, until this last sickness that about wiped her out,” Erin said.
‘I’ve always liked my scar’
Growing up, Jane loved to show off the scar on her midsection to friends. Of course, the questions followed, but she always knew how to explain it, because she always asked her parents about how the scar got there.
“I’ve always liked my scar, she said. “It was like, ‘Oh.’ “
While out for much of the fall and winter, Crockett was motivated to get back on the field.
“I wanted to get back with my team,” she said. “It’s fun for me. I get to meet new people.I’ve played since I was 4 on
I guess,”
and off.
“I can keep up with everyone. I have the backup inhaler just in case.”
In March, Jane will head to a transplant center in Omaha, Nebraska to see when she’ll need to go on a list for a new liver. It could be urgent. It could be two or three years still down the road.
She’s not worried.
“If you go in strong for the operation, you’ll come out strong,” Jane said.
Erin said that naivete is bliss, not really knowing what to expect 15 years ago. Now they have more questions, more concerns, having to face maybe another transplant soon.
“But like she said, you go in strong, you come out strong,” Erin said. “You just have to have good attitude about it. She’ll be fine.”
Jane’s proud came from.
“We hope that she continues to be proud of it, because it’s something amazing,” Erin said.
“It’s her battle wound and she’ll carry that forever.”
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