by Addy Czarnecki wanted to beat the clock solely.
The Carmel High School freshman aimed to make an impact on the Greyhounds’ swim team by swimming as fast as her ability would allow her to. But as she sat on the side of the pool in the winter of 2021, she wondered if her time as a competitive swimmer was over.
Her body was failing her. Specifically, her heart.
“Every time I’d get in the pool, I had an episode,” she said. “It was just really frustrating, because I was like, ‘What the heck is happening?”’
The ‘episodes’ were moments where her heart would begin to beat at a rapid pace, hindering her physical health. After going to Riley Children’s Hospital, she was diagnosed with Supraventricular Tachycardia.
It is caused by issues with electrical signals within the heart, which can in turn lead to palpitations. Those feature symptoms of shortness of breath and dizziness. Throughout her battle with it and the proposed recovery time, she asked herself one question: Would she be able to get back in the pool, and if so, would she return to a competitive level?
“I’m a distance swimmer, and I was just worried,” she said. “Is my body going be able to do this physically?”’
Three years later, the Ball State swim and dive freshman believes it happened for a reason.
“After having swimming almost taken away from me, it made me realize that it’s not all about the clock,” she said. “I should just swim because I get to.”
‘Is this in my head?’
After Amy and Tim Czarnecki put their daughter in swim lessons when she was just a child in Savannah, Georgia, they did not force her to continue after the basic levels.
After the initial trials, it was all Addy.
“[Addy’s] always been a kid who we never had to push her to do anything,” Amy said. “In swimming, we wanted her to do well if she wanted to, but it was never for us. She just always put in the extra effort.”
Addy likes doing a lot of things. Those activities range from hanging with friends and playing with her dog to a ‘secret passion’ of rescuing beta fish.
“They have to live in these tiny little cups, and that ‘s really sad. I’ll bring them home and put them in my nice, setup tanks,” she said.
”It’s very expensive, but it’s very rewarding.”
But none of that compares to her love of swimming. After spending more and more time in the water, she began to enjoy the competitive aspect. In the eighth grade, she was ready to take the next step.
However, that is when her obsession with the clock and her time began.
“In age group swimming, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, I want to have the best time,’ you know?”
When the family moved to Carmel, Indiana in 2019, Addy’s times were good, and she hoped that would only continue once she reached the high school ranks. And they did.
But that’s when she started to notice incidents where her heart rate would elevate out of nowhere. At the time, any little thing could activate an episode.
“I could be sitting in a chair, and it would happen,” she said. “I could be doing the hardest workout of my life, and it would happen. Even when I jumped, sometimes the landing would trigger it.”
One day, Addy was in the car with Amy. She finally told her mother what was going on. At first, Amy downplayed it and thought it was something simple.
“She’s always been really in tune with things that are happening, and she didn’t seem too concerned,” Amy said. “It didn’t seem urgent, but it was definitely something that we tucked away.”
However, that’s when things began to get serious.
Addy routinely started to have episodes, and then they became a daily occurrence. They even appeared at swim practice, and with the exhaustion that came after a palpitation, she could not complete simple events.
“My coach at the time would tell me if I had three episodes during practice, I was done,” Addy said. “It got to the point where I was not doing full practices because I was so exhausted all the time. I would jump in the pool and start swimming, and it would happen.”
Even though she knew something was going on, Addy did not have a clue as to what it was.
Because of that, she began to think it was maybe a mental issue. She wondered if anything was wrong at all, or if it was just a figment of her imagination.
“At times, I asked myself if I was making this up,” she said. “Is this actually happening, or is this in my head? Is this a real thing?”’
‘It was supposed to work’
The highest Addy’s heart rate jumped to was 230 beats per minute. According to Children’sHealth, children over 10 years old should be in the 60-100 range. Even though she was an athlete, her episodes would still exceed any normal rate.
After it affected her athletically, Addy and her parents went to Riley Children’s Hospital and got the official confirmation.
“The doctors at Riley reassured me that I wasn’t making this up,” Addy said. “This is legit.”
However, after being told that, Addy was shocked.
“I’m not a kid who has a heart condition. That’s not me. I’m healthy, active and I swim,” she said. “I never would have imagined that I would have had a heart condition. That’s just never something that you think about as an athlete.”
To remove the root of the problem, cardiac ablation was required. According to the Mayo Clinic, it is a procedure that uses both heat and cold to heal an irregular heartbeat. Catheters — thin tubes — are used to get to the heart.
After finding two pathways in her heart, it turned out to be a seven-hour surgery in December of 2021. Though the operation was a success, there was a moment when Addy went into a heart block due to one of the pathways being in a unique location.
“Luckily, it only lasted a few seconds, and I came out of it,” Addy said. “I did not need a pacemaker, but it was still scary.”
But it was even more scary for her parents as they sat in the waiting area. For hours, they waited for an update about their daughter.
“The updates were ‘She’s still in there,’” Amy said. “It was nerve-wracking. When she was done, we cried.”
After the first surgery, things seemed to be going well, and Addy began to find her stride once again in the pool. She was getting closer and closer to her level that mirrored the path she was originally on. But once again, she was solely focused on the clock.
After a six-month window, the palpitations returned in June of 2022.
Some of the tissues that caused the original issues healed, and it was back to square one. In July, she had another surgery. This time, it was a six-hour procedure.
“When it came back, she thought it was behind her and done,” Amy said. “That was a little bit of a hit. [Addy] was tired of having to make a comeback.”
Though she was hurt, Addy was more confused than anything.
After having to watch her teammates from the sidelines most of her freshman year, she kept questioning why nothing seemed to be going her way.
“Why didn’t this work?” She asked herself. “It was supposed to work.”
But when she was given the green light to return to the pool, she was nervous. The first go-around, she was eager to return to the water. But with the original recovery ending in the fashion it did, she did not know what to do.
She was not ready to get her hopes up again.
“It was hard because, like the first time, I was apprehensive. The second time, I didn’t trust anything,” Addy said. “I’d still get occasional palpitations, and I’d freak out. I’d be like, ‘Oh my god, it’s coming back.’ But it just took time to learn to trust my body again and realize that it’s not coming back.”
‘I love swimming’
Though she did eventually get back in the pool, the process was once again very slow. She kept thinking about her time, and how they were foreign to the numbers she set as an eighth grader. After being discouraged that it was taking even longer to regain normal speeds, a few things settled in.
Throughout the entire process, Addy said her faith was one of the No. 1 things that she relied on. When she began to lean more and more on that, things clicked.
“Once my time got taken away from me, it kind of was like, ‘Okay, so I’m not fast anymore. Why am I swimming?’” Addy said. “It was about finding that why … I was ready to get back in and start focusing on times again after my first procedure.
“Then I just got stopped in my tracks. It was like ‘No, no, no. You didn’t learn from the first time. This is not why you’re here.’ I think there’s a reason why I had that, because longevity-wise in the sport, if you just focus on times, you’re gonna burn out. You will get tired, exhausted and you’ll be disappointed.”
After adapting, the progress she wanted nothing more than began to show itself. The times were getting better, and so was Addy. Eventually, her speed did return to the level she was at before entering high school.
She made it. But again, she made it as a swimmer. Not someone driven by beating a stopwatch.
“Reflecting on that situation, I think it was about learning to love swimming because I get to do it and not just because of times,” Addy said. “I love swimming, and I love the people I get to do it with. It just made me put so much more emphasis on the team and building those relationships with people around me because I’m not gonna be fast all the time.”
One year after the second procedure, the Czarnecki family celebrated Addy’s success and her recovery. Amy made a ‘cheesy’ heart-shaped cake, and she said you could tell her daughter was different. She said it was like a ‘weight was lifted from her shoulders.’
In all four years of Addy’s high school career, the Greyhounds won state championships. In her junior and senior seasons, she played a role in those meets. She was even a team captain her final year and placed fifth in prelims of the 100 freestyle.
“Looking back at where I had started with my high school career, ending it there was just like, ‘Wow,’” she said. “It’s just amazing what can happen in such a short amount of time.”
Now a Ball State swimmer, she has already carved her name in the record books as a freshman, as she has a top-10 program time in three different freestyle events. But besides clearing the hurdle by becoming a collegiate swimmer, there was something else this journey showed her.
Her parents are both in the medical field, and due to that and the way Riley Children’s Hospital cared for her, she wants to work in pediatric cardiology. The field focuses on children who have a wide range of heart conditions. A nursing major, Addy is also a member of the Ball State Dance Marathon committee and helps fundraise for the hospital.
In the end, she admits that the road to recovery was not the easiest. She will tell you that there were times when she questioned her future.
But, she also believes it was somehow for the best.
“The team at Riley listened to all of my concerns and went above and beyond in every aspect,” Addy said. “Even to this day, they are still giving me so many opportunities. They gave me back my ability to swim, and now they’re helping me with my future.”
Contact Zach Carter via email at zachary.carter@bsu.edu, zachcarter039@gmail.com or via X @ZachCarter85.
