At 16 years old, she's losing her fingernails.
The layers are flaking away, a side effect of her medication. It's hard for Fountain Valley High junior Dakota Lam to grip a pencil, let alone a golf club. Her fingers pulse after enough swings, and then the blood comes, spurting from the raw skin underneath the nails.
It always scares her father, Nghia. He takes his daughter home after practice to soak her hands in saltwater, hands he held as she lay in her hospital bed two years ago, clinging to life after a stroke. Bleeding triggers memories of the mysterious condition that sunk her platelet levels.
