ORONO – To say it’s been a challenging senior year for Hampden Academy’s Oriana Farley would be a gross understatement.

Having already demonstrated a propensity for developing ailments that can best be described as uncommon and perplexing through her 17 years of life, Farley had learned to take anything and everything in stride.

But even that ability was pushed to the limit when the running standout began experiencing inexplicable breathing problems during cross country races last fall.

“This is so hard because I’ve almost blocked it out of my mind. I was struggling and it got to the point where I didn’t want to run if I wasn’t going to be at least 70 percent,” said Farley, her lips quivering a bit as she recalled her frustrating fall. “It got to where it was too physically, and mentally and emotionally draining for me.

“I just picked a few meets to run … I run for my team because we needed the points. I was a captain and I didn’t want the other girls to think Ori’s giving up.”

Her teammates never thought that, but they were concerned for their captain’s health as Farley routinely was unable to breathe normally – and sometimes even draw a single breath – in the latter stages of competitive races.

After undergoing a battery of tests during and immediately after the fall season, Farley’s ailment was diagnosed as vocal cord dysfunction, a condition whose exact causes are unknown but which results in laryngeal spasms and an involuntary closing of the airway in the throat.

“It’s like your voice box closes. It would just get a pressure or some kind of stress level where it would close on me,” she explained.

Farley helped lead her Broncos to a third straight Eastern Maine Class B cross country title despite going from Eastern individual champ in 2001 to fourth place last fall.

In her final cross country meet, the defending champ finished 12th at the Class B state meet and missed qualifying to run in New Englands for the first time since her freshman year. It’s easy to see why it wasn’t difficult for Farley to bid her final fall season adieu.

“I was done as soon as I crossed the line at states and did a warm-down,” she said.

Thus started a couple weeks of rest, tests and very little of anything else.

“They’d put me on a treadmill and crank it up and stand right next to me and make me breathe a certain way so when I started getting really fatigued, they’d make sure I was breathing a certain way,” Farley recalled.

Doctors also massaged Farley’s neck and taught her various methods to help relieve the spasms and strengthen her laryngeal muscles. Once specialists closed in on a diagnosis, Farley said it was the first time in almost 12 months she felt her frustration lessen.

“They talked about sending me to the Olympic training camp in Utah because there were Olympic athletes who had this problem,” she said. “That was kind of a relief because it told me there were some high-caliber athletes who not only had it, but overcame it.”

Farley said she finally underwent outpatient surgery in which doctors performed a bronchioscopy, going in through her nasal cavity with an instrument much like the ones used in athroscopic surgery to correct the problem.

“I was partly awake for that,” she said with a horrified look on her face. “They wanted me to talk for them while it was going on. It was the most painful thing. I have kind of a small nose and they were like hammering it in and there was some blood. Then he was saying he had to cover my eyes because they were going to get stuff in them.”

Farley’s not sure how long the procedure took, but she slept for at least two hours afterward.

The operation was apparently a success because Farley returned to running without missing any of the indoor track preseason. Farley, who says she is at “90 percent,” has won all five of the individual events she’s entered and was part of Hampden’s winning four-by-880-yard relay team.

Ironically, the distance specialist hasn’t yet run the mile or two-mile this season.

“I haven’t raced anything greater than 800 meters since the surgery, but on Friday, I’m running the mile definitely,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s gonna be real tough.

“I think I’ll be a little tentative because I haven’t run it in so long and I’ll be kind of waiting for it to happen again. I just have to mentally overcome this and if it happens, I have a whole list of things I can do to counteract it.”

It’s something she must do, as she will be running distance events for Brown University next year and expects to be specializing in the 800 and 1,500-meter runs. She’s interested in studying biology and may even get into pre-med studies.

“Might as well, I’ve been learning a lot about that stuff lately,” she joked.