Aztecs swimming coach fights to defeat cancer
By: MIKE SULLIVAN - Staff Writer | ∞
SAN DIEGO ---- It was during Deena Deardurff Schmidt's normal shower routine 17 months ago when her world first began to tilt upside down. She discovered a lump on her left breast, just below the armpit, and immediately knew she was facing a situation that demanded rapid attention.
The San Diego State women's swimming coach went in for a biopsy and doctors studied the grape-sized tumor. A short time later, Deardurff Schmidt was informed she had breast cancer.
"I couldn't even say the word for a long time," Deardurff Schmidt said last week. " 'There's no way. I'm healthy.' "
That was the day Deardurff Schmidt learned first-hand that cancer doesn't discriminate. Even former Olympic standouts can't run ---- or, in her case, swim ---- away from the grim reality.
Deardurff Schmidt, a 1972 Olympic gold medalist, was facing the fight of her life, one that is still ongoing after three surgeries and the possibility of a fourth. Another challenge possibly lies on the horizon ---- Deardurff Schmidt has a doctor's appointment Tuesday amid concerns that she might also have uterine cancer.
"I feel like the worst must be behind me so anything else is going to be manageable," said Deardurff Schmidt, 48, who is married with two children. "I feel good from the standpoint that I've tried to stay in shape so that I can handle it physically.
"Emotionally, the most important thing is that you have people around you that care about you and believe in you. Being in coaching, I have to get everybody else up so I don't really have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself because it's my job to motivate the girls on the team."
Deardurff Schmidt was certainly feeling sorry for herself, albeit briefly, in late October 2004 after awaking from eight hours of surgery.
Doctors had previously tried to remove the cancer during two lumpectomies, performed about 10 days apart, but were unsuccessful because the cancer was spread throughout the breast.
That led to Deardurff Schmidt undergoing a mastectomy ---- an operation in which the breast is removed ---- and a TRAM flap reconstruction in one eight-hour ordeal. In the TRAM flap procedure, a combination of skin, fat and muscle is taken from the abdomen and used to reconstruct the breast.
"They cut me in half from hip to hip," Deardurff Schmidt said. "They take that fat ---- they call it tissue, but it's fat ---- up between your ribs and then over and they put it back in the breast."
Even though the recovery was excruciating, Deardurff Schmidt attempted to continue coaching her team. She was often weak from dealing with the effects of chemotherapy or just badly beaten down emotionally and mentally.
"There were days when just looking at her, I would think, 'She needs to go home,' " senior team captain Emily Schmied said. "She'd be so tired and was in pain. She never verbalized her pain, and that really helped us deal with it."
Assistant coach Greg Hutt assumed most of the duties, and the program didn't miss a beat. The current season is the 24th consecutive campaign in which Hutt and Deardurff Schmidt have coached together. They've been at San Diego State since 1994.
"I knew if anybody could deal with adversity, then Deena would be the best candidate," Hutt said. "It was an honor to be able to keep the program going just the way she would want it while she was out. She still did a whole lot of work before she went into all the surgeries."
Long before Deardurff Schmidt joined the ranks of women dealing with breast cancer ---- the National Breast Cancer Foundation says one in seven women will deal with the disease during their lifetime ---- she was among the elite swimmers in the United States.
The Cincinnati native began swimming year-round at age 10 and quickly became one of the best in the nation at the 100-meter butterfly. She made a big international splash in 1971 when, at age 14, she won the gold medal at the Pan American Games.
Deardurff Schmidt made the 1972 U.S. Olympic team for the games in Munich, Germany. She finished fourth in the 100 butterfly in 1 minute, 3.95 seconds, just 22 one-hundredths of a second behind bronze medalist Andrea Gyarmati of Hungary.
She was part of a record-setting performance by the gold medal-winning 400 medley relay team. Deardurff Schmidt swam the butterfly leg as the quartet finished in a then-world record time of 4:20.75.
Back then, endorsement deals for gold-medal winning swimmers weren't the norm like they are today.
"We were truly amateurs, and I'm proud of that," Deardurff Schmidt said. "Sure, I'd love to have a couple million thrown my way, but we truly did it for the love of the sport. That was kind of a cool thing."
There would be no encore at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Just five weeks before the Olympic swimming trials, Deardurff Schmidt was hit with the worst dose of adversity she had face prior to her cancer ordeal.
She tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee. She attempted to swim but was just a shell of her former self, both physically and mentally, and placed ninth in the 100 butterfly at the trials.
Just like that, four years of training proved all for naught.
"That was really a very difficult time in my life," Deardurff Schmidt said. "That was very depressing because I hadn't prepared for not making the Olympic team. I had prepared to be on that team and not given any thought to what was I going to do after (swimming)."
She was part of the swimming team at Indian River Community College in Florida the following year and then became an assistant coach. Her coaching aspirations eventually led her to Grossmont College and later to San Diego State.
Things were going fine with the Aztecs until the 2004 breast-cancer diagnosis. But Hutt points to Deardurff Schmidt's Olympic-level background as a prime factor in her ability to deal with the disease.
"The strongest thing she had going for herself was all the adversity she had been through with swimming," Hutt said. "Deena is one of the toughest people that I've ever known. Of course, it's a shock any time you hear anything like this. Cancer is a bad word.
"She's approached it just like the champion that she is."
The toughest adjustment for Deardurff Schmidt has been coming to grips with the fact that her name and cancer patient will be linked together for the rest of her life. Her breast cancer is considered to be in remission but can return at any time.
Last spring, she opted to pass on taking Tamoxifen ---- the main breast cancer fighting drug that most patients take for five years ---- due to what she termed a "quality of life versus potential of having nonrecurrence" decision.
She took Tamoxifen for about 10 days and couldn't tolerate it. The depression she felt was so severe that she was even hospitalized for four days because of it.
One of the other side effects associated with Tamoxifen is uterine cancer. But Deardurff Schmidt said her doctors don't think she was on the drug long enough for that to be the reason if it is determined that she also has cancer in her uterus.
"They just think it's bad luck," Deardurff Schmidt said.
In the midst of her personal challenges, Deardurff Schmidt continues to coach her team ---- the Aztecs lost 136-107 to Wyoming on Saturday ---- and constantly inspire the 21 women in her program.
"You can tell it actually has made her a little bit tougher, and that's good," Schmied said. "Because of her struggles and how sick she felt, it inspires us more because we know if we're having a hard set (of practice swims) or a hard meet, what we're going through is nothing compared to chemo or breast cancer."
Deardurff Schmidt doesn't spend time studying the statistics on life expectancy. Nor does she spend time asking, "Why me?"
"I got dealt a hand that I didn't really want, but who does?" Deardurff Schmidt said. "So I didn't really have any pity parties."
Her concerns lie with things such as worrying how sons Michael, 24, and Tyler, 20, would cope without her. And she recognizes how her plight has been a reality check to her athletes in terms of teaching them the value of getting regular screenings.
She has even told her team the following: "I'm glad it's me and not one of your mothers because you are away at school and you would be tormented with what to do if it were one of your mothers."
That type of teaching certainly packs more lifelong potential than instruction of proper swimming techniques.
"I know that if any of them are affected in their lives," Deardurff Schmidt said, "they will have seen that you can get through it."
Contact staff writer Mike Sullivan at (760) 739-6645 or msullivan@nctimes.com. To comment, go to nctimes.com.
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