Dancer's star rises after battle with mystery illness

By Amanda Schull
Special to The Advertiser

Alisa Suderman's long, slender legs slice across the gray of the ballet studio floor. With the attack of an energetic novice, yet with the placement and grace of a seasoned professional, she whips off three perfect pirouettes like a delicate, 5 1/2-foot-tall eggbeater.

Ballet student Alisa Suderman practices for Ballet Hawaii's Summer Finale 2004. Suderman's willpower and passion for dance helped her survive a still-unexplained debilitating illness four years ago that resulted in a kidney transplant. The 18-year-old has won a scholarship to the San Francisco Ballet School. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Ballet. Four years ago, Alisa lay motionless on a hospital bed, fighting for her life.

Alisa had been preparing to attend the prestigious American Ballet Theatre summer program. Although she had been battling a vicious cold and persistent cough in the days before leaving, she was upbeat as she packed for New York.

Concerned about her daughter's health, Ginger Suderman took Alisa to her doctor, as well as to an allergist. Both said Alisa's cough and pale coloring weren't anything serious.

On a Saturday night, Alisa began coughing blood. Ginger rushed Alisa to the hospital.

Alisa's brother, Micah Suderman, carried her into the Castle Medical Center emergency room because Alisa felt suddenly felt unable to walk on her own.

Blood tests revealed that something was going seriously wrong for the 14-year-old; among other factors, she was severely anemic, and that indicated that her body wasn't functioning properly.

Doctors decided on immediate intervention. A coma was induced to protect her from pain during treatment. Alisa was not to wake up for four weeks.

Despite a blood transfusion, her condition worsened, and a pediatric unit from Kapi'olani Medical Center rushed Alisa into the intensive-care unit. Her organs were shutting down.

Doctors worked on her around the clock, hooking Alisa up to machines to pump her lungs, kidneys and heart. They would never know exactly why her organs had failed.

By Sunday morning, the situation was grave. Kapi'olani doctors told Alisa's parents, Jim and Ginger, that Alisa might die. "We made the conscious decision not to panic. We made that decision because then (we believed) she would get better," Ginger said.

Through the crisis, the Sudermans remained calm and they were granted rare access to the intensive-care unit. From a 10-foot distance imposed by the hospital, the Sudermans began a 24-hour watch.

During the worrisome days when Alisa was in the induced coma, and after she had been moved out of intensive care, ballet teacher Pamela Taylor-Tongg and several of Alisa's dance classmates visited her almost daily. They stretched her muscles and feet into ballet positions to save her legs from atrophy.

Taylor-Tongg made an audio tape of ballet class with messages from all the girls, and Ginger played the tape for Alisa in the hospital every day during the times when Alisa would have been in class.

Weeks into the coma, and without a concrete idea why the teenager's body had failed her, doctors considered various ailments, including lupus and other auto-immune diseases. No specific cause could be identified.

Ginger began charting all the tests performed on Alisa and the medicines that were administered. She left the hospital only once, to go buy medical books to do her own research on the doctors' many theories. As an insurance adjuster, "I'm an investigator. I decided to take the situation as a learning experience," Ginger said.

During Alisa Suderman's long illness, her ballet teacher and friends came regularly to help exercise her muscles and lift her spirits. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

At their house, Jim installed a ballet barre in the girl's bedroom, identical to those she used at the ballet studio. Although she couldn't even lift her head at first, her parents were certain the barre would encourage her to begin strengthening herself.

Because she had lost all control of her body, a physical therapist began treating Alisa. "I had to learn how to crawl, then I started using a walker," Alisa said. Eventually, she started teaching her therapist to dance. She began at her barre with simple moves, basic, beginning ballet, which gradually toned her deteriorated muscles.

Alisa's health slowly started to mend. But she visited the hospital many more times with various complications. Her kidneys were not functioning properly. Eventually, she was forced to go on dialysis.

For nearly three years, as she prepared for a kidney transplant, Alisa spent three hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in dialysis. During that time, her strength improved enough to allow her to return to the ballet studio, where she slowly re-taught her muscles elementary ballet.

Alisa soon learned time did not stand still while she had been sick.

"When I woke up I felt like no time had passed," she said, but when she joined her ballet classmates, she realized, "everyone had gotten so good. I used to be one of them."

Alisa was disappointed at first, but as Taylor-Tongg recalled, "There was never a time when she gave up."

Jim Suderman would donate one of his kidneys for Alisa's transplant, which took place at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. The Sudermans spent a year living in the San Francisco Ronald McDonald House, a facility for patients and families, during the process.

"As soon as we found out she needed a kidney transplant," Jim said, "(Alisa and I) just kind of looked at each other, and that was it. ... We're like two peas in a pod."

On Dec. 14, 2001, surgeons transplanted the kidney. As doctors examined her, they were impressed at the recovery Alisa already had made from her mystery illness. They told her if her lungs hadn't been in such great shape from dancing for so many years, she would not have survived the intensity of the ventilator in the Kapi'olani ICU.

In San Francisco, Ginger said, Alisa's resilience was evident. Alisa worked at the front desk of the Ronald McDonald House during her stay and people were comforted by her constant smile and cheerful outlook. Other house guests regarded her as a walking miracle and some cried at the mere sight of her.

"Alisa has inspired so many to look at their own lives differently," Ginger said.

Alisa thinks her optimistic attitude helped her recover. "There is always somebody worse off than you, so you can't beat up on yourself," she said.

When Alisa returned from San Francisco, she dove into dancing, using it as physical and mental therapy. Taylor-Tongg remembers that Alisa was the first to arrive at class and the last to leave. "If she didn't do it right, she'd do it over and over, but never with frustration. She never got down on herself," the teacher said.

Other girls looked to Alisa for inspiration. Taylor-Tongg calls Alisa a "little light who constantly lifts everyone else up in the studio."

One of the reactions to a kidney transplant is the body's inability to filter potassium effectively. For several months after her surgery, Alisa experienced excruciating leg cramps, which would send her to the floor, writhing in pain. Taylor-Tongg admits being panicked, and on more than one occasion, she wheeled Alisa from the studio to her car in a chair from the ballet office. "Alisa would wave over her shoulder smiling and say, 'I'm sure I'll be back tomorrow,' and she was," Taylor-Tongg said.

Alisa challenged her strength daily, always trying to push herself more than her teachers wanted her to. She looks at her experience being sick as a blessing in many ways. "If I hadn't gotten sick, I wouldn't know the people I know now, and I wouldn't trade that in for anything. I have so much appreciation for dance now, and for being able to do everything that before I took for granted."

Despite the pain, hospitalizations and lost time, Alisa argues that her illness actually benefited her ballet. Time spent immobile weakened and shrunk her muscles, and she says this allowed her to develop them all properly, creating muscle mass ideal for ballet from scratch — nothing bulky or unnecessary. When her friends and teachers stretched her legs while she was unconscious, it created more flexible muscle tissue and, she insists, curvier arched feet.

"I got to start all over again with no bad habits," she said. "I can even eat whatever I want — not very many 18-year-olds can say that."

Ginger recalls a comment her son Micah made to her during the first fearful days of Alisa's ordeal. "He told me, 'Mom, she hasn't danced yet. She's not going to die because she was born to dance.' "

This summer marked a very special milestone in Alisa's life. She went back to San Francisco, not for medical treatment, but to spend six weeks in the esteemed San Francisco Ballet summer intensive.

It was the longest Alisa had ever been apart from her parents, and the classes were grueling. Some days she spent almost eight hours dancing, but Alisa was determined to prove to herself that she was ready for the challenge.

At the end of the intensive, Alisa was one of only a handful of summer students asked to stay for the year. She was offered a full scholarship, which she happily accepted.

"This is a big opportunity. I've only really been back dancing for two years," Alisa said.

Taylor-Tongg is excited for her student. "It's come full circle," the teacher said.

Alisa's family is nervous about letting her go, but they are impressed with the advances Alisa makes.

"She's finally getting her opportunity that she has worked her whole life for," Ginger said.

On Thursday, Alisa will return to San Francisco. She is looking forward to seeing new friends and to continuing the intense training she started this summer. Most of all, the girl whose life was spared because 'she hadn't danced yet' is excited to spend the next year dancing and to make up for the four years she missed.

Amanda Schull, a corps member with the San Francisco Ballet, starred in the 2000 movie "Center Stage." A 1996 Punahou graduate, she trained in the Islands and danced with Hawaii State Ballet and Ballet Hawaii.