WNBA Star Diamond DeShields on Relearning to Walk After Surgery

Basketball games are known for being loud. Crowds cheer. Shoes Squeak. "Lose Yourself" somehow always inevitably blares from a speaker. But, lately, Chicago Sky basketball guard Diamond DeShields has been seeking out the quiet.

"Silence is my friend," the 29-year-old reveals.

This wasn't always the case. The player grew up in a big family, with three siblings and athlete parents. She was raised around the boisterous chaos of sports — the balls "thwomp-ing," the announcers booming. That environment felt like home, and being an athlete was at the core of her identity. Going pro for the WNBA team the Chicago Sky in 2018 only bolstered the idea that she belonged on a thunderous court. But when she learned in December 2019 that she'd need to have an invasive back surgery to remove a grape-sized tumor from her spinal cord, everything changed.

As DeShields dealt with a long, punishing recovery and relearned to walk post-op, she learned to be comfortable with silence. However, this was only the beginning of her journey.

In December 2019, DeShields was feeling herself. "I had just come off my best season as a pro – I was a WNBA All-Star, and I was feeling great about myself and getting ready for the Olympics," she recalls.

Then, during a winter game in Italy, something unexpected happened. "I jumped up for a rebound and felt this jolt of lighting shoot through my body when I landed on my feet," she remembers. "I was like, 'That hurt.' But I kept playing. Then suddenly, I couldn't lift my knees to run to the other end of the court. I walked off the court and thought, 'Oh, maybe I have a back spasm?"

After that initial pain on the court, the WNBA star didn't think much of it. She hadn't experienced back issues before, and she was about to be off for Christmas break anyway so she felt generally unconcerned. Although she was in pain, there was plenty of time to recover. Still, she had an MRI scan, just to be safe. A week later, her phone rang.

"My agent called and was like, 'You have a tumor in your spinal cord,'" DeShields says. "That made absolutely no sense to me. I was like, 'Is it cancer? Am I going to die?' He was basically like, we'll talk about it when you get home, but you should be on the next flight out."

The tumor was a spinal schwannoma (which typically impacts people in mid-life), and she soon learned that surgery was necessary to prevent severe nerve damage or paralysis. On the flip side, the removal of the tumor could also cause paralysis.

On the plane, this news still hadn't fully hit her. "I was a little delusional at first," DeShields reveals. "I thought, 'There's no way my career is going to end like this. It won't be a big deal, I'm going to fix it and I'll be playing again in a few months.'" She had a plan. She almost felt optimistic. But after the surgery, reality started to set in.

After the athlete returned to the U.S., what was supposed to be a three-hour surgery to remove the tumor from her spinal cord turned into a nine-hour one. "They found out the nerves had wrapped around the tumor, meaning I was face down for nine hours," she remembers. "I woke up and the first thing I realized was that my face was swollen and I couldn't move [from] my waist down."

It felt like waking up from a nightmare. "I remember just looking at my big toe," she says. "I don't knowf you remember Uma Thurman in Kill Bill? When she was telling herself to wiggle her big toe in the back of the pickup truck? I was doing that for literally hours, but my toes were not moving. I started freaking out. I was like, 'Am I going to be able to walk again?' 'Am I paralyzed?'"

More bad news followed: DeShields had nerve damage and the effects of the surgery were causing daily full-body tremors that would last for up to nine hours.

She first discovered this right after surgery, when the team doctor came in and put a hand on her foot in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture. "It felt like a million lightning bolts had struck my foot," she says. "After that moment my fingers started to tap involuntarily on my thigh and my arm raised up. I went into these crazy tremors for a few hours. Imagine your arm goes to sleep but then you have to do something really fast with that arm. But [it's] more painful."

The first few days post-op were "miserable," and the days and months afterward weren't much better, she says. Although she'd been optimistic going in, her "it'll be fine" attitude started to fade. "I was so in my head, and there were times I thought I wasn't going to make it through," she says. To make matters worse, COVID hit during her recovery, delaying her progress. Still, a piece of her was determined to keep pushing through so she could get back on the court.

As her recovery progressed, it was eventually time to relearn how to walk. "It was so frustrating," DeShields remembers. "I was used to moving at such a fast pace on command, and then suddenly I was being treated like a baby. When I wasn't in my wheelchair, my nurse had a belt around me that she held onto. I couldn't run away if I wanted to. I felt so helpless."

Even when she was making progress, feeling gratitude was difficult. Walking across the room was an improvement, but it was nothing like running across a basketball court, a feeling she desperately missed. "Even things I deserved to be celebrating, I just felt like: if I wasn't able to run and jump and play basketball again, it was never going to be good enough," DeShields says. "Looking back, I would have liked to have gratitude for the little steps forward I made, but at the moment, all I wanted to do was play basketball. If I wasn't able to do that, I was not going to be happy."

After a year of rehab, DeShields decided to travel to the WNBA bubble in Florida, where the games were taking place amid COVID. The camaraderie she felt with her teammates was the best medicine, even if she wasn't 100% recovered.

"That year was so challenging for me, and playing basketball was still incredibly stressful," she remembers. "My first game back, I was sitting in the locker room while everyone else was warming up, feeling scared. I'd been so limited in what the doctors would let me do in practice. When I played, I told my coach, 'When I give you the signal, take me out.' It was a trial to see if I could even sustain the pace and speed of an actual game."

That first game, everything felt hard — even lacing up her shoes. "I hadn't worn sneakers on my feet since surgery for more than two minutes [because of the nerve damage]," she says, adding that her play didn't feel on par with her usual performance. "I couldn't feel my toes until about three years after surgery," she says. "That was the last domino that needed to fall in terms of the nerve damage. Now, I'm back to baseline." Still, there are other types of damage and trauma the athlete has yet to overcome.

DeShields says her support system was key amid her recovery, even though many didn't know what to say. "Most people were literally speechless," she says. "They just couldn't relate." Still, she could see that everyone was trying to be supportive and present. "I have brilliant friends who spent hours on the phone breathing life into me, and I think that's been the most consistently helpful thing," she adds.

It was also helpful to connect with people who had gone through a similar experience. "It's crazy to find somebody who actually understands," she says, adding that she's in touch with a UK-based man who had the same surgery. "I've been talking with him on WhatsApp for months, just checking on him, trying to help him through his recovery," she says. "So many people have reached out to me, which has been so eye-opening. I love talking to them."

Beyond the mental and physical transformations, DeShields' identity has also undergone a metamorphosis post-surgery. "I always viewed myself as an athlete and only that," she says. "That works when you're healthy, but it's a volatile situation because, eventually, you stop playing, whether when you retire or because of an injury." She adds that basketball was always so integral to her identity and that those accomplishments accounted for a large portion of her happiness. After removing the tumor, that needed to change.

"I had to really sit with the possibility of never playing again," she says. "That allowed me to explore. 'Well, what are you going to do then? What interests do you have if you can't run up and down a court and shoot a ball?'" This process is still ongoing, a "lifelong mission," as she looks for fulfillment off the basketball court. Currently, one of her biggest hobbies is watching anime. "Anime is my shit now," she laughs. "Those shows are always about the most mundane girl who then comes into some crazy power or ability. She has to build herself up, overcome challenges, and become the hero."

As the hero in her own story, she doesn't feel she's come into her power quite yet. "I have glimpses of it," she says. "But I don't feel I've fully come into that feeling of I've arrived. Or re-arrived. It's all about the journey for me now."

Now, nearly five years later, DeShields has recovered physically for the most part, but she is still grappling with how her experience has impacted her in other ways. "Prior to my surgery, I wasn't a big mental health person. I believed in mental toughness and rest," she says. "Now I'm trying to understand the ways I've been affected mentally, which are still kind of unclear." She's tried many things to help her through the darkest times in recovery, from prayer to meditation to talking to friends, family, and therapists.

"I'm so much more mindful of the things I interact with now — what I ingest, what music I listen to (if any), the type of people I'm around, how I talk to myself, and how I spend my days. I want all things positive." She adds that she never wants to take anything for granted, including her health, adding: "I've been in a situation where tomorrow is never promised."

One thing that continues to protect her energy? Sitting in silence. "I've been in a big period of self-reflection and recovery and awareness," she says. "Now, I'm 100% comfortable with the silence."

It's here, in the quiet of her room, away from the bustling court, that she's able to fully reflect on her staggering journey. "I've come to believe that God sat me down for a reason," she says. "He said, 'Nope! You need to sit down right now and comb through some things in your life.' I hope that by the end of my career, I'll have inspired more people to push through hard times - the moments in their life when they may want to quit."

Molly Longman is a freelance journalist who loves to tell stories at the intersection of health and politics.