LISA Aitken has been tested to the max over the past few years. There were days when the most strenuous activity the squash player could manage was to drag herself out of bed to have a shower before needing a lie down.
This was the result of catching dengue fever, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, following a mosquito bite when she was competing in the Malaysian Open in the summer of 2014.
“When I got home from Malaysia, I was in hospital for a couple of weeks,” she recalls. “There’s nothing they can give you to make you better so you basically just have to ride it out. I was hallucinating and everything.”
It was a bitter blow for Aitken. After a hugely fruitful junior career, Aitken had successfully made the transition to the senior ranks. She represented Scotland at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and was making her mark on the world tour having broken into the world’s top 40.
The dengue fever severely derailed her plans to continue up the world rankings though, with the after-effects lasting much longer than she had anticipated.
“After a few weeks, the dengue fever was out of my system but I was just wiped out,” she says. “For 18 months following that, I just wasn’t right. Some days, I could get up and go for a walk whereas other days, I could only have a shower and then I’d have to go back to bed. It was so inconsistent – I never knew how I was going to feel. I had to move back in with my parents and it was hard because it was just completely unknown.”
Aitken comes across as a bubbly and positive person but the 27 year-old from Montrose admits that while she had more days of feeling positive than negative, she had moments when she doubted of she would ever regain her fitness.
“I’d be lying if I said that I was always positive and that I always knew that I’d bounce back,” she says. “There were days when I wondered if I’d ever feel healthy again and I went through the works emotionally.
“But I knew that if I stayed in a negative mental state, I’d never get back so I just tried to stay on the right frame of mind and be patient.”
Eventually though, Aitken began to see small improvements in her health and despite a minor setback as a result of rushing her comeback, she was ready to make her first post-illness competitive appearance in January of this year. A minor injury prevented Aitken building up much momentum but then selection for the Scottish team for the European Team Championships was a timely boost.
“It was so nice to have a Scotland shirt on for the first time in years,” she says. “That has been the highlight of this year.”
Comebacks are rarely smooth sailing but things have gone well for Aitken in the past few months, with nothing interrupting her surge back up the rankings.
Reaching the final of a PSA World Tour event Jersey was an indication that her form was coming back and she followed that with her maiden world tour title in New Zealand, defeating four seeded players on her way to the trophy.
To win such a prestigious event was something that Aitken had not even managed pre-illness and it provided a significant boost to her confidence.
“That was huge for me,” she says. “To get that first title was great but it was relief that I felt more than anything. That’s when I felt like I was really back.”
Despite the monumental struggle that Aitken has been faced with in recent years, she believes that it has, in a funny way, been good for her. And perhaps even stranger is that she would not change anything.
“During my time off, I did a lot of reflecting, a lot of video watching and a lot of thinking about how I had been as a player and how I wanted to change moving forward,” she explains. “There was a huge shift in my mentality too – I did a lot of growing up and so I matured as a person which enabled me to mature as a player.
“I honestly wouldn’t change what’s happened. I know that sounds ridiculous because it was such an awful time but it made me work through things that I’d not have had to face if I hadn’t got ill.”
The next few months are all about securing qualification for next year’s Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, which are now less than eight months away. A medal in the mixed doubles is, believes Aitken, a realistic target while she will continue to build on her recent world tour title win.
“Now it’s about moving on to the next level,” she says. “In the next year, I’m aiming to get into the world’s top 20. I’m really motivated and really confident that I have what it takes to get to that level and if I’m honest, that’s something that I’ve never fully believed before.”
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