COEUR d'ALENE - Fear of the unknown can sometimes be the biggest fear of all, bigger than what happens in reality.

Take the case of Lake City High senior three-sport athlete Clarissa Smith, 18, who on Oct. 16, 2013, in her junior year had heart surgery to fix an atrial septal defect, which the American Heart Association explains as a hole in the wall that separates the top two chambers of the heart.

"The blood that pumps through it, it's supposed to be filtered," Smith said. "The hole was there, so it wasn't filtering my blood clots. So the blood clot got through and then it formed in my finger and my doctor said I had a stroke in my right index finger."

In August of 2013, right before the Coeur d'Alene born-and-raised athlete found out what she had, Smith, then 16, had gone inner tubing and water skiing with some friends.

"She had gone water skiing and tubing on Hayden Lake with her friends," said Tana Smith, Clarissa's mother. "We thought she sprained her finger holding on too tight to the tow rope. We were having her massage her fingers in ice, because we could tell they weren't broken. The one finger never did heal. It was still cold, she lost feeling and we figured we'd better get her into the doctor. It turned out she had two holes in her heart, so this little sleeve Band-Aid apparatus, the two holes were close enough together so they could use one. Her heart is enveloping that apparatus and it seals the holes off."

Both Clarissa and her parents - father Kevin, who works as a truck driver for Mutual Materials in Hayden, and Tana, a stay-at-home mother - learned from Dr. Carl Garabedian at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, where she had the surgery, that hormones from one of her medications caused the atrial septal defect. She will have to wear the apparatus the rest of her life and her next checkup appointment will be sometime in 2021.

"I was pretty scared at first," Clarissa said of her days right before the surgery. "Your mind goes to 'What if?' and it goes to the dark side. But then my doctor made me really comfortable, because he said he did hundreds of these surgeries and there are no side effects that are really bad. I went home the same day after the surgery, because they didn't crack open my chest. They went in through an artery in my hip with a tube that went up through my heart and they put the tube through the hole and they made the device (apparatus) go out and they just plugged it into the wall. There was the flap that closed, so the device that's in my heart right now works as a flap. My (original) flap was supposed to close, but it didn't, so they put the device there. It's made of nickel."

Then came nearly two weeks of recovery.

"My family was definitely there for me and there have been people that have helped me a lot with the struggles I had coming back," Smith said. "I couldn't walk very much, because if I got up then where the entry point was, it was an artery and it would break open and I would bleed. I did it the first day, I'd lay in bed for six hours and I couldn't do anything. I laid there like a vegetable."

Tana said the doctors told the family things could have been much different than just two weeks of recovery and the same-day surgery.

"Her finger was dying," Tana said. "Our doctor sent her to the hospital and they did heart tests and that's how we found out that the blood clot and that snuck through the little flap in her heart and instead of going up into her brain, it went down her arm into her finger. So we were very grateful that it didn't go up and it went down, or else she could've died or (become in a vegetative state) her whole life. When the doctor said she had a stroke, we were like 'What?' It was just a chance happening thing. The doctors said she was lucky she did find out when she was (on the medication) because had she been older, it could've taken the different route and made her a vegetable and maybe even killed her."

A mere 10 days after her surgery, Smith returned to play volleyball and helped the Timberwolves go 1-2 at the state 5A volleyball tournament at Post Falls.

"Her heart wasn't getting the proper oxygen levels," Kevin said of the time shortly after the surgery. "They put her on an inhaler. Within a week, she never touched it. Being a three-sport athlete, her energy went through the roof."

Lake City girls basketball coach Bryan Kelly said the team was concerned about her quite a bit.

"When it concerns the heart, you're really worried," Kelly said. "Heart issues are scary. I didn't know if we'd have her healthy. But her mom called me and everything went fine. After two weeks, she was a whole new person. She leads us in her energy and leadership. She's one of the toughest kids I've been around in 20 years of coaching (the last three as head coach of Lake City). It rubs off."

This season, Smith is still thriving as she is second on the Timberwolves (14-4, 2-2 5A IEL) in scoring with 11 points per game, and second in rebounds with four per game.

"She can guard the post and she can guard three or four positions," Kelly said. "You'd hope that's something you can clone. You hope younger players can play at that level."

Smith's older sister, Amanda is a 2010 Lake City graduate who works at Educational Talent Search in Coeur d'Alene. Clarissa wants to major in sports psychology at North Idaho College, then perhaps transfer to the University of Idaho. Currently she works at Qdoba Mexican Grill in Coeur d'Alene. She also has a younger cousin who plays for Coeur d'Alene, Emily Callahan.

"It's been a lot of fun," Smith said. "Both of us are team captains, so we'll say 'Hi, cousin' and the referees will look at us."