Left with everything: Burris' Hollihan returns

The girl, her family and a few friends sat huddled in a small room at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, waiting for the nurse, anesthesiologist and inevitably, the surgeon. This was the last place she would go before the operating room.

It was the morning of Dec. 13, 2013, and the girl wasn't superstitious, but having an operation on Friday the 13th felt a little creepy. Just three days earlier, she had celebrated her Sweet 16 birthday withwhitecake with whipped icing from Marsh, the only kind she or her sister will eat. She also did the Luminaria Walk at Minnetrista; she liked the symbolism behind it.

Back at the hospital, the girl said goodbye to her parents and friends, and she followed a nurse down a hallway. She walked without crutches or a boot. When she reached the operating room, she had to wait outside the door alone for several seconds as the staff finished prepping.

Once inside, she sat on the bed. She saw all of the sharp tools sitting just beside her on a tray, and she became frightened. Everyone in the room had a mask on — except her. Everything was white; the medical staff was dressed in white, the bed was white, the room was white. She was an athlete, a volleyball player on one of the state's most prestigious high school programs; but she felt weak. She felt helpless.

Right before the girl got the anesthesia, she began to cry. Since none of her family or friends could be with her in the operating room, she had a stuffed animal, a gorilla named Blazer, with her — the same one she brought throughout chemotherapy and radiation. The gorilla, like the girl, had a damaged foot. She clutched the gorilla's hand tight, and she felt the nurses trying to pry it from her as she slowly fell asleep.

"We won't take it from you," they told her.

The girl had spent the last several months thinking, what would they do with her foot? It was real now.

Back in the waiting room, the girl's mother sat quietly, sending silent prayers. She didn't eat anything for fear of upsetting her stomach. She wasn't thirsty either. She had to do something for three hours, so she scrolled through text messages and well-wishes on her Facebook page. But mostly, she had her eyes on the door.

If the surgeon walked through that door, something had gone wrong. For months, the girl and her family had discussed this possibility. She went into the surgery knowing she might wake up and have her body changed forever if that's what was necessary.

The mother was prepared to tell the surgeon to amputate her daughter's left foot.

When the girl awoke in the recovery room, she felt loopy. Months of being on medicine and treatment made her say silly things. She thought one nurse's eyes were pretty, that another nurse's teeth were pretty, and she would tell them so.But inthis moment, the girl had a singular focus. The girl looked up at the nurse, then tried to crane her neck forward and glance down.

"Do I still have my foot?"

Aug. 23, 2013

Tiffany Hollihan sat in the passenger seat of a silver 2007 Dodge Caravan as her mother, Debbie Hollihan, drove her home from school. Then a 15-year-old sophomore at Burris, Tiffany had an important question.

"Have you heard anything?"

Just a month earlier, Tiffany's high school volleyball team was at a Ball State University camp headed by Cardinals coach Steve Shondell. A skilled back-row player who had been playing since she was eight years old for club programs like Munciana, all of a sudden she couldn't move laterally to dig balls — an alarming development. She chalked it up to a right ankle injury and started wearing ankle braces on both feet. Each time she took the court, she'd lace the braces extra tight and put on her shoes. The right shoe fit over the brace; the left shoe, strangely, did not.

A series of doctor appointments followed in the weeks after, filled with tests. Visit after visit, Tiffany wondered, "Why aren't they paying attention to my right ankle?" That was the foot that hurt, even if it wasn't as swollen as the left one. But the left foot was all the doctors cared about. Tiffany took notice of the language the medical staff used around her: Benign, cyst, tumor — terms she didn't know. One word that was not used, at least initially: Cancer.

When her daughter posed this question in the car, Debbie didn't answer at first. They were on Wheeling Avenue, almost home, but Debbie couldn't lie. This was going to be Tiffany's fight, and there was no hiding it.

"It's cancerous," Debbie finally said.

Tiffany's father, BillHollihan, was waiting when they arrived home — which was unusual because he was supposed to be at work. Tiffany gave both parents a hug, but she still didn't know what to say. Her mind was racing. Cancerous? What does that even mean?

Tiffany gathered up a bag of things and left the house for the one place she could feel normal, even if she knew things would never be the same: Volleyball practice.

Dec. 13,2013Part II

No news was good news, right? That's all Debbie could think about as she sat in the waiting room at Riley Hospital for Children while doctors operated on her youngest daughter.

There were a lot of aspects that made Tiffany's diagnosis — Synovial Cell Sarcoma in her left foot — unique. Lawrence D. Wurtz, an orthopedic surgical oncologist with Indiana University Health and Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health, estimates that only 1 percent of cancers are sarcomas, and breaking it down even further, there is soft-tissue sarcoma — like Tiffany has — and bone sarcoma. While teenagers and young adults are the age group most prone to Synovial Cell Sarcoma, most see it develop near the kneecap, not the foot.

"Given the tumor she had and where it was — because it was a sizable tumor located in the foot, where the anatomy is very tight and very complex — most times this would have led to an amputation," said Wurtz, who performed Tiffany's surgery.

That's the textbook answer, Wurtz says, because it's often very difficult to preserve the nerves and blood vessels that allow the foot to function. The medical staff also had to weigh the likelihood thatthe cancerwould spread to other parts of her body, particularly her chest. Just because the tumor was in her foot doesn't mean she didn't have a life-threatening disease, according to Jacob Zucker, a Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Fellow of the Indiana University School of Medicine who oversaw Tiffany's chemotherapy.

Zucker and Kevin P. McMullen, a radiation oncologist with IU Health, had overseen her six rounds of chemotherapy and six rounds of radiation. They had done everything they could do to shrink the tumor, and Tiffany eventually hada decisionto make. "We both knew Tiffany was the type of person to advocate for her wishes, herneedsand her wants," Dr. Zucker said. "And she could tell us what the right treatment was. In the end, it was really Tiffany's decision, more than her doctors or her parents." Tiffany was weakened from all the treatment, a fraction of the girl she had been just months before. But she was resolute in the weeks leading up to the surgery.

"If (the amputation) has to happen, it will, but I want to go to the beach one day and feel the sand on my toes, and it's not going to be fake," she said later of her decision. "I felt like I wanted to bemore pureand be more true to my foot. The thought of the amputation horrified me."

And that's how theHollihanswent into that fateful surgery, with the agreement that if the amputation was absolutely necessary, Wurtz had the permission to proceed. But the surgeon never came to that waiting room door, not until the operation was all done — with the foot intact.

"We were certainly within a millimeter or two of the margin, with as big of a tumor as it was," Dr. Wurtz said later. "Doing that and preserving the nerves, blood vessels and tendons at the bottom of the foot, it was somewhat difficult. But everything turned out fine."

When Wurtz delivered that news, Debbie — seated across from him along with her best friend, Melissa Clark — started to cry tears of joy, and hugged the surgeon.

"My husband and I go to church, and I just knew that God could take care of all of it," Clark said later. "Something the doctor said, we were looking at each other and crying. Then we laughed and hugged. It was all good news. I knew the Lord had answered our prayers."

The battle wasn't over that day, though, not by a long shot. In many ways, Tiffany's journey was just beginning.

Feb. 19, 2014

Dr. Bob Helfst had helped Tiffany Hollihan rehab from injury once before, and they had become close. Now Helfst calls her "one of my kids, non-biologic extended family." When he would instruct Tiffany, she would challenge him with questions, like why am I doing this? If she could find something to argue about, she would. It was all infun.

That was not the girl who arrived at the Muncie physical therapy office less than two months after surgery. Chemotherapy and radiation had taken a toll. Normally muscular but still very slender, she had dropped 25 pounds.

"She showed up the first day for therapy – after her surgery, radiation and all that – white as a ghost, absolutely bald, half asleep," Helfst recalled. "And I don't think she said two words to me."

Tiffany didn't understand why she was there. She couldn't do anything, she wasn't playing volleyball and she couldn't go to school. Treatment consumed most of her time, and what was left of it, she didn't want to be doing this.

She was declared cancer-free March 21, 2014, but eventually she needed a break — mentally and physically.Helfstunderstood, and they stopped meeting later that year.

May 27, 2015

Tiffany walked into a volleyball team meeting near the end of her junior year excited. She had spent the winter watching her boyfriend, Ryan Morey, play for the Burris basketball team, and she had that itch to compete again.

It had always been on her mind: Would she ever play volleyball again?

"I can remember absolutely vividly the day I met Tiffany, that was one of her first questions," Zucker said. "As hard as it is, I couldn't promise her one way or another whether she'd be able to play."

The timing was right, though, as everything else seemed in order. Her junior year was the opposite of the prior one. She loved being in school instead of at home and in hospitals. She got to see her friends again, and she was in a comfortable environment. Burris Principal Dawn Miller, a breast-cancer survivor, made sure of that, keeping an open-door policy with Tiffany in case she wanted to lay down or needed to talk. She stocked her office with applesauce and graham crackers to snack on.

"The first thing we told her was to not worry about school," Miller said. "The emphasis was on her health. We would do everything we could to support her at school, but she had to worry about her health."

That year in P.E., a class led by junior varsity volleyball coach David Harman, was when Tiffany started to truly enjoy physical activity again. The next step was convincing her mother.

"There's a lot of risk in her playing," Debbie said. "Radiation has caused bones in there to be very weak. It's scary for mom, but we were willing to take the risk and let her live her life."

That day in late May, she officially rejoined the Burris volleyball program. It didn't matter that the head coach, John Rodriguez, stepped down at the meeting. Tiffany was more focused on getting her body ready to play again, and that day set the tone for the next few months. That meant reconnecting with Helfst, whom she had stopped going to after eight months. She had a different mentality this time, though – more smiling, less doubt.

Helfstwould put boxes two or three inches high and have her jump; he'd put bands around her ankles for mobility drills. The task was different now; he wasn't just helping her walk, he had to help her get ready to play volleyball. And when things got tough, and they definitely did, Helfst would incorporate a volleyball into the routine to serve as a motivator.

"But there were plenty of tears and there were days where the foot just hurt, and she'd come in like a beat dog,"Helfstsaid. "There are going to be good days, and there are going to be bad days. I told her, 'Keep plugging, we're going to get there.' She'd dry a tear, buck up a little bit and go to work."

The fire was back.

Sept. 17, 2015

DebbieHollihantook the microphone at the scorer's table at Ball Gym shortly before 7 p.m. and she tried to walk. Not overly comfortable with public speaking, she was nervous and didn't realize the cord would prevent her from going any farther. She'd be stationary for her three-minute speech.

This was right before Tiffany's 18th match of the season, and by now, she was finding her groove. In her very first match of the season against Monroe Central, she shanked the first ball that came at her, but her body was holding up and the rust was falling off. She originally had a goal of playing one match per week, but she had long surpassed that.

On this night, though, the game became secondary. Debbie had arrived about 15 minutes before the junior varsity match that night against Cowan to set up a table to help raise money for Burris' third annual Childhood Cancer Awareness night. The event started two years ago when Burris' Emily Brinkman, then a sophomore, was diagnosed with cancer. On this night, Brinkman sat in the first row of bleachers, not five feet from where Debbie began speaking.

"September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month, and in the past four years, our Burris Owls have watched two of its very own battle back from rare forms of cancer …"

No one in the gym made a sound.

The Owls' varsity squad stood to the left of Debbie, in numerical order on the back line holding hands. Tiffany, normally in the middle as No. 11, instead stood on the end, closest to her mother with her left hand locked with teammate Taylor Jackson's right hand. Jackson had become one of Tiffany's closest friends this season, in spite of each competing for playing time at libero; they are team captains, along with Alissa Kunczt. Tiffany asked Jackson to stand next to her during the speech.

"One of the harsh realities we had to face," Debbie continued, "was that Tiffany may lose her foot to amputation to save her life, or never walk again."

Tiffany felt Jackson's grip get tighter. Away from the team for two years, theHollihanshad been disconnected mostly from the volleyball community. Many knew Tiffany had cancer, but very few knew just how close she had come to losing her foot. As this reality set in, Tiffany heard sniffles from her teammates down the line.

Debbie went on to share about how during one of their trips to the hospital, she remembered seeing an infant lying in a crib in the room next to Tiffany's, a baby that might never learn to crawl. She suddenly felt lucky that her daughter got 15 years. She thought to herself, how long would this baby get?

Reading from a sheet of paper, Debbie eventually looked up and realized everyone was crying, and she nearly lost it herself. Tiffany, for the most part, held it together by staring at the floor, but at one point she heard a crack in her mother's voice. "I was like, 'OK this is good, everything is good,'" she would say later. "Then, thewater works."

Debbie closed the speech by saying, "I am proud to introduce our once-cancer patients and our now cancer survivors,Emilyand Tiffany."

"I told her going into that night, 'I'm here for you. You can cry on me, I'll be your substitute boyfriend for the night,'" Jackson said later. "… When she got called up, we were hugging and it just brought tears to my eyes. It's something very emotional, but it's something very cool."

Tiffany walked to the scorer's table, hugged Emily and then her parents, and then retreated toward Burris head coach Mike Dodrill, who while wiping away tears with his sleeve, hugged each. Tiffany then walked back to her mother one more time and gave her a long hug.

"It's not always possible to win," Debbie said later. "The ones that lose the battle don't necessarily fight less; you don't get to control that. That's one of the things we learned, it's not always in our hands."

The Owls won that night in three sets, and theHollihanshelped raise more than $600. Win-win.

Oct. 13, 2015

Ten minutes before 7 p.m., the girl stood in Ball Gym with her parents by her side.

There were many reasons Tiffany Hollihan fought to save her foot and fought to play volleyball again, and one of them was this night — senior night. As a freshman, it's just assumed that one day you'll have that moment where all eyes are on you, and everyone in the gym applauds your dedication to the program. But that's not always true. "This easily could not have happened," her father noted after. "She couldhave notbeen able to walk, she could have not been here at all. So many things were unknown, but there she was."

In many ways, she came full circle that night against Central. Walking onto the court with her parents; hugging Principal Miller; receiving a gift bag from Jackson; playing against her former club coach (Central coach Wes Lyon) and her former club teammates (Central's Micah Leavell and Nikki Marshall); and playing in front ofHelfst, Clark and her family and many more friends in the stands.

Hollihan entered the week seventh in Delaware County in digs with 222, playing in 85 of a possible 91 sets as the Owls (13-21) start sectional play next week. But being able to walk — and play — carries more weight than any statistic.

"I would've been quite pleased," Wurtz said, "if after it was all said and done and the tumor was removed from her foot … I would've seen a huge victory for her to be able to essentially walk and have a functioning foot. The fact that she has been able to excel and get back into sports like volleyball, it's beyond the expectation.

"Far beyond the expectation."

There's always a chancethe cancerwill come back, and amputation would again be a strong consideration. But as time goes on and she gets further away from it, there's less and less risk that it will come back, Wurtz said. She'll enjoy a normal life, and that's what her intent is.

Reflecting on her daughter's journey, Debbie can only shake her head and credit the medical professionals she put her blind faith in.

"All these little things had to go our way for her to get to this point," she said. "God was with us, for sure."

After Tiffany finished eating cake and drinking punch with her teammates following the match, she said goodbye to her parents and continued mingling. This is the life a teenage girl is supposed to have — hanging out with her basketball star boyfriend, hanging out with her teammates. No tubes, no wigs to hide all the hair she had lost, no walking boot to protect the bruises she'd accrued from treatment.

The path to reach this point wasn't how she planned, but the destination is what she imagined years ago. Through the peaks and valleys, a new perspective has formed.

"It feels so good to go out there," Tiffany said. "I love winning and I love being competitive, but there's a true joy in playing. I've never really experienced that before."

The girl had once clutched her stuffed gorilla and closed her eyes to an uncertain future — fearful of losing it all. Instead, she was left with everything.

To help fund childhood cancer research, visit Curesearch.com.

Contact sportsfeatureswriter Ryan O'Gara at (765) 213-5829. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGaraTSP.