SportsLine.com wire reports
Aug. 11, 2000
INDIANAPOLIS -- The other seven swimmers already had finished, but Isaac
Grombacher was floundering. His arms and legs burned. He gasped for every
precious bit of air. He still faced another 15 meters of agony.
The 25-year-old swimmer thought of giving up Friday in the U.S. Olympic
trials, especially after taking a big gulp of water on one of his strokes in
the grueling 200-meter butterfly.
But Grombacher had come too far to quit. Just three months earlier, he was
unable to move his left side after doctors removed a tumor the size of a golf
ball from the right side of his brain.
"I was tired, real tired," said Grombacher, a 6-inch scar zigzagging along
the top of his shaven head. "I thought about just doing the freestyle and
getting out of the water."
When the public address announcer relayed Grombacher's story to the crowd at
the Indiana University Natatorium, everyone roared like he was on world-record
pace. No matter that he looked like he might need one of the lifeguards to pull
him from the water.
"I never dreamed -- not when I was in the hospital, not at anytime in my
life -- that I would hear that kind of cheer for me," Grombacher said. "It's
something I'll never forget."
It didn't matter that he wound up last out of 93 competitors who finished
the morning preliminary. His time of 2 minutes, 14.40 seconds was more than a
second behind the penultimate swimmer and nearly 12 seconds off Grombacher's
personal best.
But he had come so far since late April, when severe headaches left him
wondering what was wrong. His neurologist believed the problem was merely
migraines, but ordered an MRI exam as a precaution. A few days later,
Grombacher was summoned back to the doctor's office with grim news.
It was a tumor. He would need surgery -- the sooner, the better.
"I was pretty freaked out," Grombacher recalled. "The doctor showed me
the MRI and I said, 'Man, that thing's huge!"'
Fluid was eating away at his brain, a problem that eventually would have
killed him even though, as it turned out, the tumor was benign. On May 8, he
underwent six hours of surgery in his hometown of Austin, Texas.
Grombacher was warned that surgery could change his personality, or cause
learning disabilities, or leave him with partial paralysis.
When Grombacher awoke from surgery, his left side was lifeless. He couldn't
move his arm or his leg, seeming to confirm his worst fears.
"I was so afraid of paralysis," he said. "The best way to describe it is
how you feel at the end of a race, when you know what you want to do but you're
so tired your arms and legs won't do it. But it was more than being tired.
Nothing happened."
Fortunately, the movement returned after a couple of weeks, and Grombacher
once again focused on swimming at the trials for the first -- and only -- time.
He already was planning to retire from competition after the meet.
"I went to the trials in 1988 when they were in Austin," said Grombacher,
who graduated from the University of Texas in December with a degree in medical
engineering. "I decided then that I wanted to go to this meet."
After surgery, he wasn't so sure. His left side still felt weaker than his
right. He knew his conditioning was extremely poor.
"I didn't know if I would be embarrassed going slower -- a lot slower -- than
everybody else," he said. "I just decided to get in there and compete the
best I could. It's something I'll never forget."
There have been no signs of the tumor growing back. Grombacher has a job
waiting back in Texas at his old high school, where he hopes to get into
coaching. He left competitive swimming on his own terms.
"The last couple of strokes, I thought, 'This is the end of my career,"'
he said. "This was the way I planned it."
AP NEWS
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