In the history of the Gregorian calendar instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, it's difficult to imagine many sports weeks challenging the one recently logged by Dana Mathewson.
On a Saturday, the San Diego native became engaged to University of Central Florida medical student Dristin Hughes. The next morning, Mathewson hopped on a plane to compete at the immaculately manicured, strawberries-and-cream tennis dreamscape known as Wimbledon.
The week ended with a wheelchair doubles championship alongside Japan's Yui Kamiji, making Mathewson the first American woman in her sport to win a Grand Slam title.
A ring. A trophy. A spot in history.
Welcome to wild, wonderful forever.
"The thing that gave me the most realization of what I'd done, I was like, wow, my name is going to be in gold on the wall at Wimbledon for the rest of my life, or Wimbledon's life," Mathewson said. "That's pretty surreal to think about."
When Mathewson was 10 and attending Mission Bay Montessori Academy in University City, she began to feel off during a soccer practice. Players were running during a conditioning drill when she felt pain in her back.
Thoughts raced through her mind. Had she been kicked? Did she pull a muscle? The coach suggested a possible muscle cramp.
"I remember my legs feeling heavier and heavier," Matthewson said Tuesday from Nottingham, England, the site of her next event. "The pain got worse and worse. Cut to me getting driven home and I was just screaming in the car, the pain was so bad. At that point, I could still feel my legs.
"My friend had to help me up the stairs into my home. I was lying on the living room floor screaming. My legs started tingling, the same way they do when your leg falls asleep. I remember looking at my foot, trying to move it and nothing happened. From then on, (the feeling in her legs) was just gone."
Mathewson's parents, both physicians, recognized the medical emergency had the potential to be neurological and rushed her to Rady Children's Hospital. Steroids were administered to relieve swelling in a section of the spinal cord.
She was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a disease that causes inflammation in a section of the spinal cord. It can occur to anyone at any age and can be as rare as one person among 1 million.
Though no one knew at the time, a magical Wimbledon moment may have been saved that day.
"I'm very lucky I was rushed to the hospital fast enough and got steroids in my system to combat the progression of the swelling that was happening in my spine," said Mathewson, 31. "So the nerve damage wasn't complete. I'm now able to feel my legs and walk a bit, but I need to use a wheelchair now."
Understanding how a child processes dark thoughts hovering over a life forever and fundamentally changed in a relative blink seems difficult to comprehend.
For Mathewson, the process unfolded in chapters.
"I think children are very resilient and their brains are very plastic," she said. "They're able to adapt to something and move on. But I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a lot of denial.
"I remember getting gifts from friends and making comments like, oh, I'll use this when I go to sleep-away camp or when I do X, Y and Z. I'm sure people in the room felt uncomfortable, because of course they know I'm not going hiking or whatever. That hadn't sunk in for me."
Over time, she began to push back on limits and sledgehammer ceilings.
Mathewson, whose mother Arlene Wong lives in Del Cerro, tackled adaptive tennis at the Barnes Tennis Center in Point Loma. She later competed at the University of Arizona. After completing a master's program on audiology in London, she moved to Orlando, Fla., to train full time at the United States Tennis Association's national campus.
Rankings and wins began to snowball.
"I didn't think I would be an athlete. I thought that whole part of my life was done," said Mathewson, who is the top-ranked American woman and No. 9 in the world. "Finding sports again, that was a huge part of me finding my independence. That was a big part of me figuring out who I was again.
"It's definitely made me a strong person."
Mathewson is eager to fight against the narrative surrounding adaptive athletes, as much she craves fighting for points on the court.
"A lot of the narratives about the people like me, we were in a car accident or had some terrible happen," Mathewson began. "But look how amazing it is that we're not lying in the house all the time, instead of appreciating us for the athletes we are.
"Other countries have gotten to that step. I hope we can get to that place where we see people like me the same way we see LeBron James or Serena Williams. I know it can happen, because I've seen it in other parts of the world."
The graduate of The Bishop's School in La Jolla did what she could to advance that goal at Wimbledon.
One of her doubles opponents was Diede de Groot, a Dutch player who is the undisputed top player in the world. She has won seven straight major singles titles, including the most recent one against Mathewson's partner Kamiji on Saturday.
"We were definitely the underdogs," she said. "In my head, I just hoped to play well. I'm still kind of in disbelief, but in a good way."
In a week like few others, a bit of a bummer finally arrived.
"I'm really sad I never got to have my strawberries and cream," she said. "I was saving it to the last day. By the time I could go into the dining hall, it was all cleared out. Next time, I guess. Rain check on the strawberries and cream."
Put it on the calendar.
