This Tri-Cities gymnast is bouncing back from intensive care
Emily Larson is used to working hard.
The 15-year-old gymnast has logged thousands of hours practicing and perfecting her skills, from daring flips on the balance beam, to explosive moves on the floor and vault, to gravity-defying tricks on the uneven bars.
But recently, she’s been working hard on something else: healing.
Emily, a freshman at Kamiakin High School in Kennewick, developed meningitis last fall and spent more than a month in the hospital, including a couple of scary stints in intensive care.
“I feel good now,” she said the other day, back home in the Tri-Cities with her family.
She’s catching up on school work and building up her strength through physical therapy.
She hasn’t returned to gymnastics yet, but that’s her goal. And it’s a safe bet she’ll achieve it.
“If anyone can come back (from this), she can,” said Brett Garland, her coach at Garland’s Gymnastics in Kennewick.
Emily is a Level 8 gymnast, which means she’s capable of all sorts of dazzling moves.
Before her illness, she’d head to Garland’s after school and practice for 4 1/2 hours with her team.
‘She attacks fear’
During competition season, she’d spend the weekends at meets around the state and beyond.
Emily first tried the sport when she was about 4.
Her mom, Cindy, jokes that she “needed a break from my kids,” so she enrolled Emily and two of her siblings. The other two grew tired of it, but Emily fell in love.
She’s earned all sorts of honors, including becoming state uneven bars champion a few years ago.
Despite her achievements, Emily isn’t the kind of athlete to rest on her laurels or coast on talent, Garland said.
“She’s worked for everything she’s gotten. She’s tenacious,” he said.
And, “she’s not a fearful kid, which in this sport is awesome,’” Garland said. “She attacks fear, as opposed to succumbing to it.”
Emily started feeling sick in early November.
At first, it didn’t seem too serious — she had a headache and then developed nausea.
But she kept getting worse, and after numerous trips to the doctor, she was admitted to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland with meningitis. She spent several days there and then was flown to Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Doctors initially thought she had the less severe viral meningitis, but it turned out her case was bacterial.
It’s unclear how she contracted the illness, which involves the inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord.
After spending time in the ICU, Emily started to improve. Her family thought she might soon be headed home.
Then she had a setback in the form of encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, and she had to return to intensive care.
She finally came home from Seattle in mid-December.
It was a hard time. At some points, Emily was so sick she couldn’t see or walk.
She missed home. She missed her siblings and friends. She missed the gym.
There were some bright spots: at Children’s, she met members of the Seattle Seahawks, as well as the singer Ciara, wife of quarterback Russell Wilson. Some gymnastics stars also personally reached out, including Jake Dalton and Samantha Peszek.
The University of Washington gymnastics team sent her an encouraging video.
That was especially cool because she hopes to attend the school and compete for the gymnastics team.
Overwhelming support
Another bright spot came in all the support heaped upon Emily and her family from friends and strangers alike.
People wrote letters, cooked meals, donated to a GoFundMe campaign to help the family with expenses.
The owner of Emerald City Gymnastics Academy in Redmond set up the GoFundMe, and that gym delivered meals to the hospital.
“These are virtual strangers to us who fed us while we were down there,” Cindy Larson said, choking back tears.
“The support has been incredible,” said Scott Larson, Emily’s dad.
Along with Emily, Scott and Cindy are parents to Ryan, 28, Skyler, 24, Nicole, 21, Drew, 17 and Aidan, 11.
They’re proud of how far Emily has come.
She hopes to be cleared to return to gymnastics soon.
“I have no doubt that she’ll push on and next season she’ll compete. She is a fighter,” her mother said.
Despite the difficulties of the last few months, Emily hasn’t let herself feel angry or dwell. That’s not her way.
“I just kept going, because there’s nothing else I could do,” she said.
And as soon as she’s strong enough, she said, she’ll be back flipping and leaping and working hard at the sport she loves.
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