Besides, my winning streak didn’t last long. I got my comeuppance on our next task, which required me to pick up a batch of plastic clothespins and clip them onto pegs. Yep, that was it—something a kindergartner can do without much trouble. When Fanny described it to me I rolled my eyes, but I soon discovered just how much I had lost.
I had a tough time just trying to pick up the clothespin and open it. Even after I gave the task real effort and focus, I accidentally knocked some of the clothespins across the table. When I finally managed to pick one up and open it, it snapped out of my hands, flying into the air. Once I managed to pick one up and open it successfully, I had trouble clipping it onto a peg. I missed my mark a few times, and sometimes I didn’t put the peg on all the way, so it would snap back off, which was pretty jarring. For a former college athlete, this was tough to take.
Some exercises combined seemingly unrelated tasks. For example, in one I had to stand on one of those plastic bubbles—which I couldn’t do, so the nurse had to hold me up—while she had me write ten words that started with the letter “b” on a white board. I quickly came up with three b-words: “bubble”—I was standing on one, after all—“bottle,” and “bottom.” And then… nothing. I make my living tossing sentences together off the top of my head, without making grammatical infractions, factual errors, or even saying “Um” or “Ah.” But here I was, unable to think of seven more words that started with “b.”
When I stalled, Fanny showed her sweet side and gave me hints. “A kind of fruit,” she said. Banana, obviously. I kind of knew where she was leading me—I knew it was rattling around my brain somewhere—but I couldn’t come up with it. Then I started staring at the board, which made me feel like the class dunce. I felt like I was trying to learn a second language—so incompetent and so helpless, I almost started crying. Instead, I stared at Fanny until she had mercy on me and stopped the drill.
Fanny didn’t provide any more hints or ask any more questions. She knew my first physical therapy session was done.
But I couldn’t go back to my room. Not yet. After I failed my way through physical therapy, it was time for mental therapy, where I hoped for a little redemption.
Fanny knew what I did for a living, so she said in a soft, encouraging voice, “I want you to write something. What would you like to write about?”
“Well,” I said, “my job is to cover these incredibly gifted, talented people. But since I’ve been here in rehab, I realize these are the real athletes, and I want to write about them. It’s not LeBron dunking over Tim Duncan. It’s someone who could barely lift their heads and say their name a couple of months ago, and now they’re speaking fluently and lifting five-pound weights.”
“Okay,” she said. “Write about that.”
Fanny left me alone while I sat down to type for the first time since I had fallen a month ago. I was pleasantly surprised by how easily the words flowed from my mind to my fingers, and how smoothly my hands glided across the keyboard. This felt good, especially after the drubbing I’d just taken in physical therapy. When I finished I felt pretty good about what I had written. Having composed a few essays in my career, I’m pretty tough on my own writing, so when I feel good about it, that usually means I’ve written something decent.
When Fanny came back to see how I’d made out, I was looking forward to showing her that I hadn’t lost everything.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s look at what you wrote.”
But when I started reading it back to her, I knew immediately that my little essay didn’t just have a few burrs in it, which you might expect. It was awful. I mean, terrible, filled with grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, even words reversed. You could barely understand what I was trying to say, as if I was just learning English.
But the scariest thing to me wasn’t my horrible writing; it was the fact that I thought, when I’d finished, that I’d done pretty well, perhaps good enough to be a first draft for a “Parting Shot” on The Sports Reporters. I rely on my internal critic to make sure I don’t humiliate myself on national TV. How could I be so unaware of what I was doing? Could I trust my brain to do good work again—and not embarrass myself in front of my bosses, my colleagues, and a few million viewers?
“John,” Fanny said softly, “don’t worry. You are only taking the first steps right now in a long process. We’re going to get you back to where everything is just fine—I promise. Do you have a computer in your room?”
“Yes. Wanda brought my iPad.”
“Great,” she said. “I bet you’ve gotten a lot of emails from people to see how you’re doing.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Have you started answering them?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, go back and start doing that.”
So I did. But when I read my first attempt at an email response, it was the same thing—riddled with embarrassing mistakes.
I had a long way to go.
I wanted to crawl back into bed, throw the blankets over my head, and hide, but my first day of therapy still wasn’t over.
I was allowed to go back to my room before my last session, walking therapy, to eat my lunch and enjoy a nice visit from Aaron Taylor, a former two-time All-American offensive lineman who played for Lou Holtz at Notre Dame and then went on to win a Super Bowl with Green Bay. He and I had worked together on ABC College Football for a few years and we’d stayed in touch.
We’d been catching up for twenty minutes or so when Fanny Hernandez came back to tell me it was time to start walking therapy.
“Can I see this big guy for a while?” I asked. I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem.
“Nope, it’s time for walking therapy.” Fanny said, and when she turned tough, she meant it—but I didn’t know that yet. So I kept chatting with Aaron until she interrupted us: “RIGHT NOW!”
We were both startled and stifled our laughs, but I got up and I got going. Aaron followed me and watched our exercises through a window. Unlike physical and mental therapy, walking therapy was conducted in a class with five or six of us in various stages of recovery.
Fanny started us off. “Mrs. Johnson, you’ll go first. We’re going to have you walk in a circle three times.”
Mrs. Johnson did it. A day earlier I might have been tempted to chuckle at this, but I’d already gained a ton of respect for what these people were overcoming, and a good dose of humility about what I could and couldn’t do.
“Okay, Mr. Jones,” Fanny said, “we’re going to have you climb up these three steps.”
Mr. Jones climbed the three steps, as you’d expect. But when Fanny asked me to climb up three steps, I tilted to the right and was about to fall over when Fanny saw it coming and caught me. For a small woman she was amazingly strong. With some effort I made it up to the top step, then turned around and walked back down.
When I saw Aaron watching me through the window I was pleasantly surprised by his encouraging smile. This was an athlete who’d gone through many weeks of rehab, after all, and he understood the process. He gave me a thumbs-up, then went on his way.
After the session I went back to my room and did my best to text Aaron. “Had second-fastest time in ‘Rehab 50 Foot Walk,’ behind only the ninety-three-year old lady. Kickin’ ass!”
The next day I texted Aaron: “Almost had her today. But not fair. She used a damn cane!”
He replied: “We’ll put an asterisk next to her record, just like Sosa’s and McGuire’s.”
A few days later he followed up: “How you doing, big guy? I’ve got some XXXL blue scrubs if you need me to pretend to be a doc and bust you out.”
This was one of the hardest patches of my life, but you can see how valuable good friends can be, and the occasional good laugh.
None of my problems we were addressing directly affected my depression, but when I realized just how much I had lost and how long it would take to recover—if I ever could—it made me sink again. It didn’t help that I couldn’t
resist watching the shows I was supposed to be hosting, but it would have much harder if ESPN hadn’t been so good about my recovery. They never doubted me or pushed me to come back too soon.
After watching an episode of The Sports Reporters one Sunday I sent an email to our producer, Joe Valerio, who is also one of the show’s creators. “Great show, Joe,” I wrote. “I wish I could be there!”
I got a call from him a few minutes later. “We miss you, John. Take care of yourself, and focus on getting better.”
Because Joe has always been a good, caring friend, I felt I could be more candid. “Joe, I have to tell you, it’s very difficult to sit here and watch my shows go on without me. In most jobs you don’t have to watch a video of your replacement sitting at your desk, doing your work. And it’s not just that someone’s taking my job—it’s that I’m no longer capable of doing it myself.”
“I understand,” Joe said. “But you’ll be back. We’re just keeping the seat warm for you.”
Joe was being awfully nice. So were Jeremy Schaap and Mike Lupica when they guest-hosted The Sports Reporters, softening the blow each week by saying, “I’m just filling in for John Saunders, who’ll be back soon.”
Everyone needs to be reminded that people care, but because I’m prone to depression, I might need more reminders than most. My “emotional metabolism” seems to run a little faster than other people’s. When I’m depressed, I burn through praise faster, and its positive effects wear off more quickly, which is pretty typical for depressed people.
Paradoxically, even hearing how much people cared could be a double-edged sword. Sometimes their support confused me because they seemed to care more about me than I did, which made me feel unworthy of their love and concern. My thought pattern went something like this: “Why do they care about me? Don’t they know I’m not worth it? I’m scared they’ll find out I’m not and stop caring about me.”
I needed to know they cared, but it could also make me feel bad because I knew they were worried about me, and I didn’t want to be a problem for them. Perhaps this helps explain one of the most common themes of suicide notes: the person no longer wants to be a burden to the people they love.
Those were deep issues that I wasn’t going to resolve any time soon. But getting back to work was something I could focus on.
When you’re depressed, any distraction can be a great savior, and work is one of my best. Focusing that intensely, with the cameras rolling, can push the depression into the background for a little while. You can go back home or to the hotel room and cry for the rest of the night if you like, but while you’re in the studio you have no choice but to put it aside and focus on your job.
For me, fall weekends are the best. We prep during the week, but on Saturday I’m working at the studio all day. Then I stay in Bristol Saturday night and get up at 5:30 A.M. Sunday to tape The Sports Reporters. I walk back to my office at ESPN around 8 A.M. and take a nap until 11 A.M., when I watch my buddy Chris Berman host NFL Countdown until 1 P.M. After that I join Boomer and the NFL staff to start watching the games in one of the studio’s war rooms. When the games are over I do our NFL show from 7 to 8:30. During the car ride home Sunday night I’m still riding a bit of a high, capping a forty-eight-hour break from depression.
It’s a great drug, and I knew I never needed it more. So my motivation was doubled: I didn’t just want to get better; I wanted to get back to work. To the doctors the two went hand in hand, as they should. But I was convinced that if I could just get back to work, I would get better. And I knew that if I couldn’t, my depression would get worse. Each day I was away from my job I felt like my life raft was floating away.
After about a week of rehab with Fanny I could do all the simple tasks fairly well. I could stick the clothespins on the pegs consistently, and I got good enough putting the ball in the basket that I started shooting it. I felt my form was pretty good, but from the line I wasn’t much better than Shaq. Well, maybe a little better. It was only a few feet, after all.
Near the end of my second week of rehab I started going on regular walks down the corridors with one of the orderlies. We soon added a basketball, which we tossed back and forth during our walks. We didn’t chat much because I was focused on following his instructions.
I could even walk up two flights of stairs—a far sight better than the set of three I struggled to climb when Aaron Taylor had visited. Still, Fanny Hernandez urged me to use the handrail.
“No!” I insisted. “I can do this!”
I actually freaked her out a little bit when I jogged up the steps. I’m sure she was afraid that if I stumbled, she couldn’t help me.
Six weeks after my fall I was much better at the physical and walking therapy, but the mental therapy proved to be the most aggravating of the three. So even though I was getting better physically, I was getting more depressed.
The only times I wasn’t crying was during rehab, because I didn’t want to cry in front of strangers, and with my daughters, because I didn’t want them to worry about me any more than they already were. Fortunately Jenna didn’t have to experience this directly because she was away at Ryerson. As outgoing and vibrant as she is, she’s very, very sensitive. After four weeks she called me in tears.
“Daddy, I didn’t know you were going to be in there for so long!” If she were living in New York, I’m not sure she would have been able to handle this.
To be released I needed the approval of Fanny Hernandez and a team of three doctors. One of them, Dr. Greenwald, was the head of the rehab unit. Most of the nurses and doctors were very nurturing. Dr. Greenwald was not. He’d tell me, “You’re not getting out of here until I know you’re ready to get out of here.” I was not going to charm him into letting me go.
After I’d been on the rehab floor for a couple of weeks he’d come into my room and say, “We’re gonna get you out of here soon.” But he would never give me a day or even an estimate. I was beginning to fear that I would never get out of there. I know that wasn’t rational, but during this stretch rational thinking wasn’t my strong suit.
When Wanda came to see me one day during my sixth week I was crying almost as hard as my sixteen-year old roommate was on my first night at Mt. Sinai.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I told her between sobs. “I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t take it anymore.”
She tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. I had gone to the hospital seeking help for a head injury. But now that the injury was healing, ever so slowly, I was discovering something more dangerous underneath it.
CHAPTER 28
A High-Stakes Stroll in the Park
A FEW DAYS LATER I WAS LYING IN MY BED, FEELING LIKE a man with two broken legs contemplating his first Boston Marathon. As desperately as I wanted to leave, I felt unprepared to return to the real world. And yet if I stayed in the hospital much longer, my depression would only deepen, which would make it even harder to get my life back. I felt trapped.
So there I was, crying quietly, when in walked two women from rehab: Fanny Hernandez and a new therapist, Helen, from Canada.
“John,” Fanny asked, “how’d you like to go for a walk?”
“Where?”
“Outside,” was all she said—but that was enough for me! I hadn’t been outside in six weeks. Anywhere that wasn’t my room sounded good.
I had fallen backward on Saturday, September 10, 2011, and now it was late October, two-thirds through the college football season. It was a beautiful fall day, but it could have been raining golf-ball-sized hail and I would have thought it was a fine time to go outside for a walk.
I got my shoes and a pair of jeans, but I had no belt, so they brought me a stretchy yellow band. I looked like Jethro on The Beverly Hillbillies. Once we got to the hospital entrance Fanny said, “First, we’re going to walk two blocks ahead to a Starbucks.”
Sounded like a fun little field trip. But when we got to the Starbucks Fanny said, “I want you to walk in, lo
ok at the menu, and find the prices for a pumpkin latte and a cappuccino, and add the two prices together.”
That’s when I realized this was no Sunday stroll. This was my test to get out, probably the most high-pressured exam I had ever taken. I simply could not take another week in that hospital. I had to pass.
After we walked through the Starbucks doors Fanny turned to me. “Do you remember what I asked you to order?
“Yes,” I said, and I really did, which was not a given at that time.
“Okay, find them, add them up, and tell me what they cost.”
I stared at the menu, and I stared and I stared—and I could not find those two items! I thought maybe the sun was hitting the menu at the perfect angle, creating a blind spot, so I walked around a bit, trying to see past it. Then I started thinking that maybe they weren’t actually on the menu and that this was a trick question.
“They’re not on there,” I told her.
“John,” she said, “they’re on there. It’s a classic…”
The other therapist, Helen, also started giving me hints. “A Halloween trick-or-treat?”
To my surprise, after I moved around a little more, the sunbeam hitting the menu was finally gone. “Ah, there we go,” I said. “I can see it better now!”
Little Fanny gave me a look I won’t forget, a look that told me she wasn’t buying my BS. Regardless, I had a job to do, and now I could do it.
“I found them!” I said. I added up the items, and blurted the answer.
“That’s right!” Fanny said.
I couldn’t resist explaining my delay. “It must have been the sun.”
She gave me the same look but added a wry smile. I found out later the reason why I couldn’t see them is because when you have a brain injury, you often can’t see things that are right in front of you. So moving around basically resets your brain, the same way you restart your computer when it’s stuck. And that’s what happened when I moved the last time: my brain restarted and I could see what I couldn’t before. Now, Fanny knew this—but I didn’t!
Playing Hurt Page 19