Judah Oquendo, The All-American: A Comeback Story

* (Judah in the 14 Year Division 100m Final)

When Judah Oquendo was 13 years old, he suffered from a collapsed lung during track practice. Less than a year later he is an All-American in the 100m and 200m at the AAU Junior Olympics. His father, Carlos Oquendo, tell his story.

"Every parent believes their child is special, so in that regard I suppose I'm not different.  Judah is 14 years old and he is competed in the 100m & 200m at this year's AAU Junior Olympics.  He is new to the sport and last year was his only first year running. He made it to AAU Junior Olympics his first year and was just shy of the podium. But what happened next showed Judah's true strength.

When Judah was 13 years old on November 6, 2019, he was in his second practice of the off-season  when he complained to me about chest pain that quickly progressed to him not being able to breathe. I thought at first, "he was just out of shape", but it progressively got worse and he told me he felt like he was dying at times, and was not able to breathe. I rushed him to the hospital and it turns out his left lung completely collapsed and was sitting on his heart. He was dying. They performed the life saving procedure of a chest tube.  

From there the purpose of the chest tube is to vacuum out the excess air in the chest cavity so that his lung will fully inflate on its own. Unfortunately in his case this did not occur and apparently the blebs on his lung that burst were not healing themselves. On November 9, 2019 we had to make the decision for him to have a VATS (Video Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery) in order to remove the damaged part of the lung, staple and seal the holes. 

Surgery was successful and we were grateful that he was alive and still with us. Judah being the determined young man that he is, said he was going to come back and run again and make it to AAU Junior Olympics, while sitting in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him no less.  

The future prognosis wasn't encouraging in that they said he could resume normal activity but there was a 20% chance his lung could collapse again. Those odds were very high and we still wanted more answers so after being released from the hospital we had several follow up appointments with a pulmonologist where we discovered an underlying condition we were not aware of - Intermittent Asthma. It only kicks in when he does activity and it's what would have most certainly caused his lung to collapse. He would just need to utilize an asthma pump before running to prevent the chest tightness, shortness of breath, and the worst case scenario another lung collapse of his surgically repaired lung.  

From there you can imagine, even with his determination there were some scary moments getting back to running again. The mental barriers when he tried to get back in shape when he got out of breath or felt like his chest was hurting. But he pushed through and displayed a mental toughness that I am so proud of so I wanted to share part of his journey to this point.