Today, at 44, Okorafor is successful, honored and in constant demand. Nnedi Okorafor's books line her bookshelves in her Flossmoor home. Because her spinal cord was involved, there was a small chance of paralysis, but the alternative was that her organs would compress, she would be disabled before 25 and most likely, her life would get significantly shortened. But that summer, when Nnedi returned to Flossmoor and her parents brought her to the University of Chicago Medical Center for a regular round of X-rays, her spine appeared to be getting worse. Nnedi wore a back brace and would remove it before matches she had always played through the pain. The only hurdle was Okorafor and her sisters had been diagnosed years earlier with scoliosis, to varying degrees of severity. Which didn’t sound unattainable: Her father was a cardiovascular surgeon, her mother a health administrator, both came from Nigeria, both had doctorates, and both demanded their four children stand out. So by the end of freshman year, she was quietly harboring a plan to quit the game and gravitate toward track, with the Olympics in mind.
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