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Above the bar
Published March 31, 2009
Before each vault he makes, Cedric Bohnert thinks just one thing — land on the mat.
“(The doctor) said (I could) pole vault, as long as I hit the mat,” Bohnert said with a laugh. “So I’ve been trying to hit the mat every time.”
With a nearly 1-inch thick steel rod holding his chest cavity in place, the 18-year-old Comfort pole vaulter is reaching new heights, literally, after undergoing a procedure two years ago to correct a condition known as “pectus excavatum.”
Also called “sunken chest syndrome,” pectus excavatum — which is Latin for hollow chest — is a natural disfigurement of the exterior chest wall that creates a caved-in look that ultimately can lead to cardiac and respiratory problems in the future.
“Basically, my chest caved in kind of like a cereal bowl,” Bohnert said. “And they said at the rate I was growing — and it grew, in the last two years probably half an inch in and got way deeper — it could push my heart over my lungs and cause a lot of problems.”
An active kid growing up, who participated in everything from football to track and field, the condition
created serious breathing issues whenever he competed.
“I did cross country my freshman year, and I knew that I had the strength to keep up with everyone, it just felt — I don’t even know if I could describe it — it felt kind of like compression or like being underwater trying to catch your breath, and you’d have to fight to do that.” said Bohnert, now a senior. “It was just a pain to deal with.”
Not thinking much of it originally, he and his family realized something was wrong in March of 2007, when his mother saw something that really concerned her — the indent in her son’s chest cavity seemed to be growing more and more.
“He was outside washing the dogs and he had his shirt off and it just shocked me,” his mother, Hannah Feller, said. “... At that point, it was a pretty good-sized dent in his chest, and by the time he had the surgery, you could fit your whole fist in there.”
On Aug. 16, 2007, Bohnert underwent what is known as the Nuss procedure. San Antonio-based pediatric surgeon Barry Cofer inserted a concave stainless steel bar under Bohnert’s sternum through two small incisions on either side of his torso. The bar was then flipped, popping out the sternum and breaking all of Bohnert’s ribs in the process. It then was left in place and will remain anywhere between 2 to 5 years to stabilize the sternum in the proper position and allow it to heal in the correct form.
“After it grows like that, it’ll be solid, and they just slide it back out, and that’s the last I have to worry about it. That’s what I’m ready for,” Bohnert said.
He expects to have it removed next year.
Although there were no complications from the actual procedure, things didn’t go as planned in post-operation.
“I just remember waking up and it just felt like I couldn’t breathe and someone was sitting on top of me — not even just sitting on top of me, it felt like three people were standing on top of me — it was like crushing me down,” Bohnert recalled.
Only semi-concious, Bohnert couldn’t remember everything that happened following the procedure. But his mother did.
“The pain was so intense that he was writhing, and there were two nurses holding him down and he was kicking while they were trying to get enough morphine in him, and then they ended up giving him way more than they had wanted to,” Feller remembered.
Six days after the operation, Bohnert was back at home, trying to rehabilitate his body.
“I spent the next four months sleeping in a recliner — the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “If I had to sneeze, it felt like I was going to explode. It was very painful.”
From there, it took almost a full year of retraining his body to take even the simplest of physical strain on his chest.
Admittedly, though, the hardest part of the procedure was the rule that he couldn’t play contact sports during his final year of high school.
“I just didn’t know I’d be missing so much, because I love competing in sports,” he said. “It’s my senior year, so of course I wanted to play football. But no contact sports.”
At the start of his final semester, Bohnert was given the good news — he’d been cleared to compete in non-contact sports.
He put the competitive fire he’s built up over the last two years into helping the Comfort track and field team finish at the top of the pole vaulting event. He’s finished second in almost every meet in his first season of vaulting since the eighth grade.
“To be good at pole vaulting, I feel like you really need to be brave — you need to face your fears, and there’s a lot of fears to be faced,” Bohnert said. “Especially at the heights people do it at, when you’re running full speed with a stick and you’re holding on trying to go up, you realize you can either go forward to fall straight back down and break your neck.”
Using that same approach with his life, Bohnert is confident he’ll always land on the mat, which is just what the doctor ordered.
After high school, Bohnert plans to participate in the Parsons’ The New School for Design summer program in New York City, and then return to Schreiner University and study graphic design.
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