Dannae Alm was sprinting from second base to third during practice earlier this season when she collided with her teammate, South Central shortstop Courtney Michael. Feeling Michael's shoulder jab her stomach, Alm froze on the spot and put her hand on her heart.

Had the hit jarred her pacemaker? Had it severed one of the wires connected to the two artificial valves in her heart? Was her heart still beating?

"If one of those wires gets cut," Alm said, "I'm basically dead."

No one expected Alm to see her 18th birthday. And surely no one expected her to ever play sports, let alone varsity softball.

But here she is, 18 as of February. About to finish her second season as the Satellites' designated hitter. About to graduate high school. About to begin the next stage of her young life -- studying nursing at Indiana University South Bend so she can help those like herself.

"Before you go into surgery, people come and tell you what's going to happen cause they read a book about it," Alm said. "I want to go in and be able to say, 'I've lived through it. I know what you're going through. I didn't read it out of some book at school.'"

From birth, Alm was diagnosed with several rare heart conditions that doctors feared would take her life at a young age. Already, there have been several scares. Like the heart surgery she had when she was hardly a week old. Or the risky open-heart surgery Alm had when she was 3.

"They didn't think I would make it off the table in the operating room," Alm said.

Alm has had five heart surgeries, including four open-heart procedures. And she has the scars to prove it.

There's the one that snakes from the top of her chest down to her belly button, marking the sliver of skin doctors cut for every open-heart procedure. Then there's the one that streaks down her back, courtesy of her first surgery.

"People stare at it all the time," Alm said of her scars. "I try not to let that effect me. It's a part of me."

Just as the pacemaker in her abdomen is a part of her. As are the two wires that send electrical pulses to the two artificial valves in her heart. Over time, those valves narrow and need to be replaced.

Thus the reason she has had so many open-heart procedures. Thus the reason she sends pacemaker transmissions over the phone to her hospital -- Children's Memorial in Chicago -- once every month or two.

Alm was in the hospital for about a week earlier this spring. Because of the blood-thinning and blood-pressure pills she takes every morning, she had her wisdom teeth removed at Children's Memorial so doctors could monitor her recovery and make sure she didn't lose too much blood.

When Alm showed up for the first day of softball practice, her cheeks were still swollen. Bruising is another side-effect of the blood thinners.

"You can tap me and I'll bruise," Alm said.

So imagine what a softball could do? Fortunately, Alm has only been seriously struck once. Last year she was warming up pitcher Olivia Pahl before a game when the ball hit her on the inside of her thigh.

"I've never had a bruise that big in my life," Alm said. "It was huge."

Most with Alm's condition can't play sports. The heart can't handle the strain. So Alm knows she has to be careful. When her heart starts beating fast and fluttering, she knows it's time to stop running.

South Central coach Bill Fryar understands that Alm can't run as far or as fast as her teammates.

"He's always asking, 'Are you OK?' He's worse than my mother. He really is," Alm said. "I have to be like, 'Bill, I'm fine.'"

Alm played her way into the lineup early last season and helped a veteran Satellites squad make it to state for the first time. Her first year of varsity competition worried her parents. The greater the competition -- the faster the ball leaves the pitcher's hand or the hitter's bat -- the greater the risk.

Alm, too, knows the risk. She just loves softball too much to quit.

"She lives a normal life," Fryar said, "but man, the stuff she goes through to do it."

Alm takes it all in stride.

"Basically you just live with it," she said. "You take what comes at you."