Playing Hurt

by John Saunders

  Depression allows you to have incredible insights into other people souls yet still be incapable of transferring those insights to your own situation. That’s true of everyone to some degree, of course, but I’ve often been struck that such serious problems can seem so easy to solve, so clear when they’re not mine—and so stubborn and opaque when they are.

  After seven days in the psych ward I had missed hosting only one ABC College Football and one Sports Reporters, so I still didn’t feel I needed to tell my bosses the real reason I’d called in sick. But the issue arose again when the psych ward’s lead doctor told me he wanted to keep me there into the next week—and who knew how much longer after that?

  I felt I had to take action. I met with the lead doctor and his assistant. They talked about the medication adjustments they were making and how they wanted me to stay a little longer to make sure the transition went well. If they were off, things could go very badly, very quickly.

  But I insisted, “I’m ready to go home.” Because I had taken my doctor’s advice and admitted myself, I could leave when I wanted to. If I had needed two doctors’ signatures, I’m not sure I would have gotten them anytime soon.

  The psych ward doctor still had his doubts, until I told him how much I wanted to get back to work. I think he saw that as a positive sign, because people with severe depression usually aren’t eager to do anything.

  It was kind of funny: two weeks earlier, I’d told my doctors I didn’t want to go on with my life. Now, I was telling them how badly I wanted to leave, and get back into the swing of things. You’d have to conclude my time in the psych ward did what it was supposed to do.

  The doctor agreed to let me out the next day, a Friday. But before they let me go I had to do an “exit interview” in the group session. When we were back in our circle of chairs the doctor asked if I wanted to say anything.

  “I want to thank everybody,” I began, “for being so forthright in talking about your own issues, and allowing me to see so many different sides of this disease.”

  In addition to making me feel better, I told them, the sessions were almost like taking a crash course in depression. Hearing everybody discussing different medications and different treatments opened my eyes to the breadth and depth of the disease, and the many approaches available to address it.

  “But more than that,” I said, “I just want to thank you for being real people, dealing with real issues. Being with you went a long way toward helping me. If I can ever do anything for you, let me know.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Dr. Dangerous

  BEFORE THEY RELEASE YOU FROM THE PSYCH WARD THEY make sure you’re seeing a psychiatrist on a regular basis. Because I had stopped seeing Dr. Horne three years earlier, they assigned me a new one.

  When I walked into his office for the first time in early 2010 I met a psychiatrist in his late fifties with a world-weary, smug expression that never changed. He had diplomas on his wall from fancy schools and was listed as one of “America’s Top Doctors” in airline magazines. I’ll call him “Dr. Dangerous.”

  He started our first session by reviewing my hospital file, while rarely making eye contact. He asked me if I was thinking about hurting myself, or others. I wasn’t. Then he asked how I was sleeping.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I wake up a lot.”

  He nodded, and then said he’d like to make some changes to my treatment—meaning, my medications. When I entered the psych ward I was already taking a small amount of a drug called Klonopin, maybe a quarter milligram, which reduces anxiety. I don’t suffer from clinical anxiety, but they gave me a little more to ease the transition into the psych ward. Dr. Dangerous increased that dosage to 1 milligram a day. Of course, I had no idea what Klonopin was for or how powerful it was. Shame on me for not doing my homework—a mistake no patient should make.

  Our following sessions all started with Dr. Dangerous sitting in his chair, looking bored. I would sit down, and he would say nothing, letting the silence grow for minutes before he’d finally ask me, “So how are you feeling?”

  “Not good,” I’d say. That was the reason I was there, right?

  Dr. Dangerous would eventually reply, “So, you’re not feeling good.”

  Then he stared at me in complete silence for a few more minutes until I’d say something, anything, just to end the staring contest. Sometimes I asked if he thought it might rain or whether he liked the Yankees. (He didn’t like sports). He usually confined his answers to a grunt or occasionally a condescending smirk. Perhaps, I thought, this was a new technique: we’re going to stare the depression out of you!

  During one of the many pregnant pauses between us I wanted to shout: “Do something! You’re not even trying to help me!” But I kept my mouth shut.

  Just to mix things up, he might ask, “What are you thinking?” Sometimes I really wasn’t thinking of anything, or maybe I was thinking about the hockey game I’d watched the night before. But because he wasn’t a sports fan, I’d just make something up. “I’m thinking about my kids,” I’d say.

  “So you’re thinking about your kids,” he’d reply, and then I actually would start thinking about my kids—and my fear of losing them. This fear had been with me from the day my daughters were born but manifested itself in different ways over the years. When they were young I had the usual fears of something happening to them, like an accident or a kidnapping. As they got older, I feared losing them to friends or even hobbies and activities, anything that would reduce their desire to be with their dad. When they got to college I worried they’d be off on a new adventure, and they might move to California and never come back. And finally, of course, I worried that Mr. Right could turn out to be Mr. Wrong. I knew that once I ran through all these fears in front of Dr. Dangerous, I would get depressed. At the end of the session, during which we might have exchanged a dozen sentences, Dr. Dangerous would never forget to ask for his $200 check.

  Sometimes I’d walk into Dr. Dangerous’s office feeling pretty good, and I’d walk out feeling depressed. I’d be stewing the whole way home: I just drove fifteen minutes to spend an hour and $200 on a guy who barely even talked to me, and all he wanted was his money at the end of the visit. That didn’t make me any happier! This man had less soul, and was less help, than my fellow psych ward “inmates.” I got more out of them in seven days than I got out of him in six months.

  It would have been bad enough if Dr. Dangerous just wasted my time and money. But he violated the Hippocratic Oath: Above all, do no harm. After I handed him his check at the end of each visit, he invariably asked, “Do you need a prescription?” After a few sessions he started increasing my Klonopin dosage. Six months later he had me taking 2 milligrams in the morning and two at night, but I had no idea if that was a lot or a little.

  Another patient might have questioned his approach, and I certainly should have, but at that time I rarely second-guessed doctors. Besides, I was already on a smaller dose of Klonopin before I’d met Dr. Dangerous, so it didn’t seem that radical to me.

  I did know, however, that six months of these mind-numbing sessions hadn’t done me any good. I kept waiting for something to happen, for something to change for the better, but nothing did. Finally, I’d had enough, and in mid-2010 I stopped going to see him. Afterward he didn’t call to see how I was doing, or why I was stopping, or even to check on my medications, my referrals, or anything else. For all this guy knows I could have died a month after seeing him, perhaps by suicide. He did, however, send me a bill for $400, to cover the two visits I’d canceled.

  I carried his legacy with me, however: I kept taking the Klonopin he’d prescribed for me—4 milligrams a day.

  Since leaving the psych ward I had started walking a fine tightrope. Thanks to the Klonopin, my sleep patterns were completely off. As a result, my moods swung wildly. One remedy was work, but that only lasted until I finished the eighty-seven-mile drive from ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol to our home. By the time I pulled into our
driveway I was already starting to feel awful—physically, emotionally, you name it.

  I would feel the effects of Dr. Dangerous’s work for several years.

  Wisely, in the midst of the six months Dr. Dangerous spent hiking up my dosage of Klonopin, I stopped drinking. On February 22, 2011, I decided I would never drink another drop of alcohol, and I haven’t. I didn’t enter a twelve-step program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which I know can be very effective. I just stopped cold—and I felt better almost immediately. Once I stopped, it didn’t take long for me to recognize that, through all my ups and downs, alcohol had not been making my life any easier. If you’re depressed, alcohol is not your friend.

  Although I didn’t know it at the time, if Klonopin is combined with even moderate drinking, it can lead to respiratory arrest and even death, so this simple decision might have saved my life.

  CHAPTER 25

  Falling Backward

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2011, WAS A BEAUTIFUL FALL day.

  A car picked me up at my home for the drive to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. When I joined the network in 1986 the entire ESPN “empire” consisted of a single building that could house all one hundred or so employees. That was all we needed to produce SportsCenter and NHL and CFL games—which is all we had. Today ESPN has deals with Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL; more than five thousand employees; and offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Hong Kong, Toronto, and South America, not to mention the sprawling campus in Bristol, which now looks more like a contemporary college campus than a TV network.

  I was entering my thirty-fifth season in broadcasting, my twenty-fifth at ESPN, my twentieth hosting ABC College Football, and my tenth season hosting The Sports Reporters, which might be my favorite show. It’s a good job. Scratch that—it’s a dream job.

  Aleah had just graduated from Fordham University a few months earlier and was considering law school. Jenna had just enrolled at my alma mater, Ryerson University in Toronto. By any objective measure I had a pretty good life—particularly for a guy who had been raised by an abusive, deadbeat dad.

  But I was just minutes away from almost losing it all.

  I walked into our studio, went to makeup, then finished my preparation for the 3 P.M. show, which was a summary of the entire day in college football. We would start by reviewing all the early games when they hit halftime, preview the handful of regional games that ABC would be covering at 3:30, then preview the best prime-time games. If all went according to plan, we’d be done by seven, which would make it the easiest game day of the season.

  At three o’clock I started our second broadcast of the 2011 college football season by saying, “Welcome to ABC College Football. I’m John Saunders, alongside Jesse Palmer. We’ve got a great day of college football ahead, including Alabama at Penn State, which we’ll be covering live here on ABC in just a few minutes. But first we’ve got an exciting game already underway between Virginia Tech and East Carolina.”

  Of course, there was no way to predict when each game would hit halftime. Fortunately we had a great producer, Rob Lemley. Now, producers aren’t typically known for their bedside manner—it all happens so fast, there’s no time to worry about people’s feelings—but College Football has a great one in Lem, who’s also a good friend.

  I’ve always liked the people I work with, and I like the work too, though it’s harder than it looks. When I’m on the air the producer delivers information about the ongoing games into my ear a mile a minute, just seconds before we go on the air. Then I start telling the TV audience what he just told me, while he continues telling me what I’ll be talking about after that.

  That’s hard enough. Once we go live I add descriptions to the highlight tape. Ninety percent of the time I haven’t seen it, and sometimes I can’t see it when it’s playing live either, even while I’m describing it to the TV audience. If I’m lucky, the researcher standing nearby might hand me a card I can read while the replay rolls. But more commonly I only get the producer barking in my earpiece, “So-and-so just ran for 44 yards and a touchdown,” which I then say in my mic to the audience, as if I’d been rehearsing it all day: “So-and-so just ran for forty-four yards—and a touchdown!” You’re basically driving blindfolded while the guy in the backseat is telling you when to turn.

  As I’m delivering the producer’s highlight line, he’s already telling me what’s going to happen on the next highlight, so it’s like having three records playing in my head at once: the first is what the producer has already told me, the second is me repeating that on air, and the third is what he’s telling me now, which I have to retain so I can repeat it after I’ve finished what I’m saying while he’s talking to me. I’m basically converting a poundingly fast hip-hop song coming from my producer to a lovely waltz for the audience—while dancing to both of them simultaneously. Then I add a fourth record once I start talking with my cohost, Jesse Palmer.

  The only way to handle all this without scratching the records is to master two very different approaches: preparation and spontaneity. For each weekend I start doing my research on Monday to give myself every chance to get all the facts right that Saturday without stumbling. (I might have launched my career as a lark, but I take my homework very seriously now.) Then, once I’m on the air, I need to be able to think on my feet because all the preparation in the world can’t help me when the producer is talking in my ear at full speed while I’m talking to the nation like I’m cool as can be, apparently having a good time—and making the viewer feel like I’m having a good time.

  Ultimately, my job is to make sure the audience can’t sense any of the craziness pumping through my earpiece. It looks like fun—and it is—but it took me years to learn. If you do it right, everyone wants your job because they think it’s easy. “You just sit up there, talking about sports!”

  Many things that other people find simple I find difficult, but I’ve never struggled at this. Growing up there were always voices in my head. Now it’s just a producer.

  On this day Lem said in my earpiece that we planned to start with a Fresno State–Nebraska score, but right before we went on the air he told me East Carolina had just scored against Virginia Tech, putting the heat on, so he thought we should lead with that instead. Then he cut in again, telling me Auburn had just slipped ahead of a ranked Mississippi State team, which could be an upset in the making, so we might put that ahead of the Virginia Tech game. And just for the heck of it, he broke in once more to say that the Texas Longhorns were in an unexpected battle with BYU, so heads-up.

  When we finally got to our first segment that Saturday we decided to go with highlights from the East Carolina–Virginia Tech game, followed by the others. Then Jesse and I set up the rest of the day for the viewers, with me feeding him questions about Stanford versus Duke (the “Brainiac Bowl”), Wisconsin at Oregon State, and Notre Dame at Michigan, the first night game in Big House history.

  Then we focused on our centerpiece, Alabama–Penn State, with Jesse breaking down Penn State’s offense versus Alabama’s defense, the keys to the matchup, and who had the advantage. I would try to put him in a position to articulate all that and do it in a way that’s fun for both of us—and the audience. I have a good rapport with Jesse—a real pro, a true friend, and a fellow Canuck, to boot—and the first segment went smoothly, as it almost always does. So far, so good.

  When ABC kicked off the 3:30 games we left the desk and walked across the studio to sit down in front of a bank of TVs to watch all the games. Our researchers stood nearby working their tails off, furiously writing down the stats and highlights coming in. While Jesse and I sat there, waiting to get back on the air at halftime, Lem started preparing a batting order for the rundown, but we knew that could change a half-dozen times in the ninety minutes it took to play a half of football.

  Normally when there are a few minutes to go in whatever game is getting to halftime first, we walk back to the set, where we work live for about fi
fteen minutes, with three commercial breaks, then go back to the bank of TVs, wait for the games to end, then do the postgame wrap-ups.

  On this day, however, I looked at the lower right corner of the Alabama–Penn State game and saw that there was a little over a minute left in the half. Then I stood up to walk to the set.

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  The next thing I knew I was on the floor, looking up at Jesse Palmer. Apparently, after I stood up, I blacked out, then fell backward. I’m six-foot-one and 225 pounds, so falling like that with nothing to cushion the blow creates a lot of trauma when your head smacks against the hard tile floor. Jesse later told me I was out for about a minute.

  When I came to I saw Jesse kneeling next to me, urging me, “Stay down. Stay down!”

  Being a hockey guy, I said, “No, I gotta get up to do halftime!” As has been documented, we are tougher than we are smart.

  Jesse convinced me otherwise, but I kept pleading with him to at least let me sit up, and he eventually relented. He put his hand behind my head to help me up, but when I sat up a stream of blood shot out from the back of my head through Jesse’s fingers. I didn’t know what was happening, but I could see Jesse’s eyes grow big. Whatever it was, it was worse than I thought. A beat later my head started throbbing like never before.

  Despite all this, I actually thought I could still do the halftime show—until my colleagues gently suggested that perhaps blood shooting out of the anchor’s head on national TV might not make for the most professional broadcast. Once I heard the cut-in announcer, Robert Flores, taking over the halftime show without Jesse or me, I knew I was done for the day.