Corinne Carson knows that she’s an inspiration to other athletes, and she takes that responsibility seriously. As the first NCAA student-athlete known to return to her sport after a liver transplant, Carson understands that her story gives people hope.

Not only did she return to competition exactly one year to the hour after receiving a new liver, Carson excelled on the basketball court throughout that first season back in 1995-96 and the rest of her career at Marymount University (Virginia). She received Kodak all-American honors and was named the Division III Rawlings/WBCA national player of the year in 1997. She holds Marymount records for points per game, single-season scoring, single-game scoring, single-season free throws made, career blocks, single-season blocks and single-game blocks. She was the 1997 recipient of the Honda Inspiration Award.

In her first tournament after the transplant, Carson was instrumental in Marymount’s 99-65 win over then 19th-ranked Christopher Newport University in the Marymount Tip-off Classic, and she led the Saints to a 27-3 season.

But most people didn’t know that after most games, she headed to the hospital for intravenous fluids to combat the severe dehydration that has become a part of her life since the transplant.

“You can drink all the water in the world, but you can’t hold it inside you,” Carson said. “When you get dehydrated you get migraines, severe migraines where you can’t see and you get nauseous. That was stuff a lot of people didn’t see, behind-the-scenes stuff.”

Many of her teammates knew what it took to get Carson on the court night after night, and it was through one of them that Carson realized the impact she could have on others. The sister of a teammate was diagnosed with brain cancer, and the young girl looked up to Carson.

“I was her favorite player, and I gave her inspiration because I was going through something as well. It was so good, but it was hard because you see somebody dying before your eyes,” she said. “She didn’t want to see anybody, and suddenly she’s reacting to me. It was scary, but I had to do it.”

Carson’s own struggle against death began with a simple stomach ache during preseason workouts in the fall of 1994. Convinced it was just her college-student diet giving her troubles, she nonetheless allowed her coach, Bill Finney, to talk her into going to the health center for a check-up. She was certain she would come back with a few Mylanta tablets and an edict to improve her diet. Instead, she endured a battery of tests that showed a severely damaged liver.

For a 24-year-old woman who touched neither alcohol nor cigarettes, the results were unbelievable. She had the tests redone to the same end. When a third round of tests showed that not only was her liver damage severe, it was worsening quickly, Carson was admitted to the hospital and told she was headed toward a liver transplant.

“Somebody tells you your liver is dying rapidly and they have no clue why — I was in denial,” she said. “I thought they were going to figure out what was wrong — it’s going to be something stupid, they’ll inject me with something and I’ll be all right.”

She didn’t have the symptoms often associated with liver disease — she had a healthy appetite and kept wishing they would let her out of the hospital so she could return to basketball. When Catholic-affiliated Marymount sent the president of the university over to pray for her, Carson was at the end of her rope.

“I’d never met the president, and I thought, ‘Why are they sending this guy in here to pray for me? Nothing’s wrong with me.’ I was really upset about it,” she said. “That night, they said I was delirious and tried to leave the hospital. It took eight doctors and nurses to hold me down. I don’t remember any of it.”

Doctors told her parents she was just hours from death. She received a new liver that night, spent two days in a coma and woke up in a hospital bed with tubes stuck in her.

“Next thing I know, I wake up strapped to a table and my mom’s saying, ‘You did it.’ I looked down and thought, ‘What are all these things on me?’

“It’s still like it’s a dream, like I’m going to wake up and it’s a long dream.”

Coach Finney remembers well his first trip to the hospital to see Carson after her surgery. He and his wife Judy went to the hospital and were surprised when the nurses allowed them to see Carson.

“She had all the plugs and wires sticking out of her and the feeding tube ... you could hardly recognize her. I looked at her and she smiled, and the first thing she said was that it was great to see us,” he said. “Then she looked at me and said, ‘Coach, when I woke up, I felt the ball in my hand.’

“Then I knew she was going to come back to play.”

About six weeks later, Carson came back to practice to see her teammates. She had been told she was never going to play basketball again. Finney said when Carson walked into practice, the team embraced her. As they sat cross-legged on the gym floor, they began chatting about the recent holidays. One of the other student-athletes asked Carson what she got for Christmas.

“She just looked at her and smiled and said, ‘I got a brand new liver,’ ” Finney said. “And that was it. They all broke.”

Less than a year later, Carson was back on the court with her team, slowly at first, but then working up to more playing time and leading her team to a successful season.

“She was a human highlight film. She was that good,” Finney said. “I’ve been coaching for 30 years, and she’s the best player, hands down, that I’ve ever coached, men or women. I’ve had some pretty decent players, but she was just a cut above.”

Finney’s wife nominated Carson to be one of the NCAA 100 Most Influential Student-Athletes, chosen by a panel of experts last year. Her story was so inspiring that the panel named it as one of the 25 Defining Moments of the NCAA. In the nomination form, Judy Finney described Carson as going from the “Comeback Kid” to the “Iron Lady.”

“She became an inspiration to her teammates and coaches, her opponents, her fellow students, and also an extraordinary role model for young players — especially little girls,” Judy Finney wrote in the nomination. “She remained modest and unassuming throughout her medical ordeal, the regional and national basketball honors and the accompanying national press coverage. She often remarked that she didn’t think she was ‘special.’ But those who knew her and watched her were extremely grateful that she graced the basketball court and their lives.”

Today, Carson is a production manager for First Capital Realty in Bethesda, Maryland. She hasn’t touched a basketball in years — her recognition for something that happened nearly a decade ago shocks her, she says — but she plays tight end for the Baltimore Burn of the National Women’s Football Association. She also plans to begin coaching a youth basketball team soon. The dehydration still plagues her — she often worries on road trips with the Burn that she’ll get sick on the bus or be unable to compete, but the passion for sports that she says kept her alive at her sickest keeps her going now.

Since Carson’s courageous return to the court after being so close to death, another student-athlete has accomplished the same feat. In 2005, Brittany Kroon, a women’s basketball student-athlete from Seattle Pacific University, received the Honda Inspiration Award for her own comeback from a liver transplant.

Like many people who have come so close to dying, Carson has adopted a “carpe diem” (seize the day) attitude about life. She said she used to do the math — the longest liver transplant recipient survived for 35 years, so she figured she might be dying at age 59 — but decided she couldn’t start counting the days she had left.

“You’ve just got to do what you want to do and be happy doing that,” she said. “You can’t worry about tomorrow.”