Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 2 | October 2018

Dr. Johnson’s news resulted in Mitchell, a soft-spoken young woman from Georgia with four siblings, including a twin sister, grabbing her cell phone. “The funny thing is no one was answering their phone when I was trying to call,” she said. “Anne didn’t hear her phone. I was freaking out. I didn’t know what to do. Then we had a trip the next day—I think we were leaving for Nashville—and I didn’t know what to do. I was trying not to cry, and I called my mom and told her she needed to come. Hurry up and get here because I have to get surgery. It was kind of scary. It was really unexpected.” She visitedwithDr.MichaelMcClintock inRoanoke the very next day, and while there, she underwent surgery on one eye. In some cases, surgeons fix detached retinas using a laser, or by injecting a gas bubble into the eye and the bubble presses against the retina, pushing it back into place. Mitchell’s case, though, was more severe. Dr. McClintock used a procedure called scleral buckle in which he placed a flexible band around the eye to counteract the force pulling the eye out of place. He then drained the fluid behind the detached retina, allowing it to return to its normal position. Her mother drove her back to Blacksburg after the surgery and took care of her for the remainder of the day and evening, and the next day, they went back to Roanoke. Dr. McClintock removed the bandages. “It was really quick,” Mitchell said. “It was blurry, but I had all my vision.” Mitchell suffered from varying degrees of blurred vision for roughly a week. The following week, though, she returned to Roanoke for surgery on the other eye, undergoing the exact same procedure. Her mom again took care of her, driving her back and forth. Mitchell refused any pain medication, preferring instead to allow her body’s natural healing process to occur. And it did. She noticed a gradual return of her eyesight, and amazingly, she suffered no complications. “I didn’t really do any rehab,” she said. “It [the recovery process] was actually really quick. He [Dr. McClintock] was really surprised that I recovered so quickly and easily, but I didn’t have any complications or any pain or anything like that. So it wasn’t too bad. I just had to wait a little bit to get new glasses.” G iven their amount of training and practicing, most student- athletes, by nature, are blind to the prospects of any sort of health-related issues. But rest assured, Rhegan Mitchell sees things quite differently. In fact, her vision is quite clear—and she never expects to take that for granted again. Mitchell, the setter on the Hokies’ volleyball team, is in the midst of her senior season, and Virginia Tech volleyball fans recognize her because of her protective eyewear. But the goggle-wearing Mitchell isn’t making any sort of fashion statement. She wears those goggles for an important purpose. Two years ago, Mitchell underwent surgery to repair two detached retinas—yes, one in each eye. A detached retina isn’t rare, yet according to the National Eye Institute, it occurs more often in people over the age of 40, in men more so than women, and in white people more so than among African-Americans. Obviously, Mitchell was the exception—and a rarity, according to the Virginia Tech sports medicine staff. “I haven’t,” Tech team physician and chief medical officer Dr. Mark Rogers said when asked if he ever had seen anyone with two detached retinas. “It’s definitely unusual. “We’ve only had maybe a couple of detached retinas since we’ve been here [13 years]. Typically, it’s a softball player who takes a softball to the face or a baseball player—some of those traumatic episodes that you see in athletes. Usually we don’t see them without an identifiable cause. Then let alone have it bilateral [both eyes] like that. It’s a pretty rare thing.” Mitchell’s symptoms revealed themselves during the Hokies’ 2016 trip to Bayamon, Puerto Rico. She felt no pain, just a little blurred vision, and decided to ask Tech trainer Anne Bryan about it. She played in all three tournament matches in Puerto Rico, but Bryan scheduled an appointment forMitchell tomeet with an ophthalmologist immediately as soon as the Hokies returned to Blacksburg. “Just one day out of the blue, I started noticing stuff with my vision,” Mitchell said. “I thought I just had a scratched cornea because I wear contacts. Then my vision just kept getting worse and worse over the trip. Then when I got home, I went to the eye doctor, and he told me, ‘Yeah, you have partially detached retinas. You need surgery.’” Mitchell wanted to wait until after the season. After all, the Hokies just had gotten things going. The three matches in Puerto Rico marked the fourth, fifth and sixth of a 32-match slate, and Tech sported a 4-2 record. But her eye doctor, Dr. Michael Johnson, absolutely forbid it. “If you wait, you could be blind,” he told her. The news jolted Mitchell, who understandably became upset and afraid. She saw injuries regularly and knew that bruises fade, ACL tears can be fixed, broken bones heal, shoulder separations mend. But any mistake related to one’s eyes means losing sight forever. 34 Inside Hokie Sports volleyball spotlight rhegan mitchell