Playing Hurt

by John Saunders

  I was just relieved to get it right. I’m thinking, I passed the test, and now we’re going for a walk! But Fanny wasn’t done with me. Far from it. We left the store and headed uptown toward Central Park.

  “We’re going to make a left on 95th,” Fanny told me, “and walk to Fifth Avenue, then make a right. Then I want you to stop at 101st and walk to the northeast side of the street and stop. And we’ll go from there.”

  It’s just five blocks, but by the time we had made the left—just ninety seconds later—I had already forgotten where I was supposed to stop. What street was it? I was in full panic. Convinced I wouldn’t be able to remember, I racked my brain for a way to bluff my way through this one.

  When we walked past a children’s museum, I said, “Wow, my daughters would really love this!” Jenna was in college, and Aleah had already graduated. They were a little old for a children’s museum! But I was just trying to build in an excuse for walking past the right street—“I was distracted by the museum!”—but Fanny didn’t grin. She didn’t ask any follow-up questions. She wasn’t giving any hints.

  A couple of blocks later she said, “John, do you remember what street you’re supposed to stop at?”

  I hesitated, trying to think of some way to bluff my way past this too, but then I just confessed, “No, I don’t.” I wasn’t sure if that would disqualify me then and there, but I knew I wasn’t going to fool Fanny Hernandez.

  She said, “101st.” A big break.

  So we kept walking, but if you’re not a New Yorker, identifying which is the northeast corner is not intuitive. There’s no sign that says, “This is the northeast corner.”

  I started working the Google map in my head as we walked: we’re heading to Harlem, so we’re going north. The FDR Highway is over there, so that’s the east.

  As we approached 101st Street Fanny asked, “Do you remember where you’re supposed to stop?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “The northeast corner of 101st.”

  She smiled. “You got it.”

  I smiled back at her—probably for the first time in days. After we got to 101st I led us right to the northeast corner. Success.

  “Now we’re going to Central Park.” The way she said it didn’t sound like I’d passed the test yet.

  We crossed the street. To get into the park, you need to walk down four or five steps, with no handrail—something you’d never even think about unless you’d just spent a couple of weeks relearning how to navigate a staircase. Fanny had seen me struggle with those steps, so they walked backward down the steps in front of me. That’s when I understood why Fanny had brought her Canadian helper—to catch me if I started to fall. But honestly, if I had started to fall, I’m not sure how much help they would have been trying to catch a man who was about the size of an NFL fullback.

  Fortunately I made it down the steps, no problem—and I wasn’t nervous doing it either, unlike my earlier challenges. My confidence was building.

  We walked about twenty yards, past a bathroom, toward a small, circular garden, and then we went around it. Then we came to a fork, went right, and stopped. Fanny said, “Now, John, you need to go back the way we came.” I would be walking in front of them, and there would be no helping me.

  “The way we came?” I asked, trying to buy a little time to think.

  “All the way back to the hospital,” she said.

  I hadn’t paid attention to the first legs of our trip because I didn’t think I’d have to. I was terrified—simply terrified. All my confidence was dashed. I wasn’t sure I could even get out of the park—and we had only gone about three hundred feet into it.

  I stood there, frozen, as if my feet were nailed to the asphalt. But I knew if I didn’t start moving, I’d fail by default and be stuck in the hospital for another week—at least. So I started shuffling, uncertainly, toward the fork in the garden, in front of the circle. I had to go around the circle, either to the right, or the left—whichever way we had come. But the problem was, when you’re going back the way you came, it doesn’t look the same as it did when you’re going the other way—and I wasn’t paying attention getting there either because I had no idea I’d be tested going back. I was panicking, moving as slowly as I could, scanning the landscape for any clue.

  And that’s when I saw the bathroom I’d seen before. Lifesaver! I remembered that it was directly in my line of sight when we came around the first time. I figured, for that bathroom to be directly in my line of sight on the way here, we would have had to come from the right. So that’s how I made my brilliant deduction: if we came from the right, I’d have to go back to the left—same path.

  Feeling better, I picked up the pace and whisked past the bathroom. I bounced up the stairs, with Fanny and Helen rushing to keep up with me. I saw the “WALK” sign to cross the street, so I kept going across Park Avenue.

  Fanny yelled, “John, we have to go back the same way!”

  She didn’t know it, but she’d just set me up for my major victory. She thought I should cut right down 95th. But I was going to go back the exact same way we had come, which meant we had to go down the eastern sidewalk of Fifth.

  I didn’t break stride. I just turned back, smiled, and said, “But we have to go back the exact same way—and we came up this sidewalk!” I smiled—and she smiled too, probably relieved that I hadn’t blown it. I waved, “Come on! Let’s go!”

  When they caught up to me Fanny asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel great! Now come on! You two are slowing me down!”

  Now I’m cruising. I’ve got this thing, and I know it. We pass the children’s museum that I’d tried to use as a distraction on the way there. I looked at it, but I wasn’t making any comments this time. No need, man. I just kept walking about as fast as I could, back toward the hospital.

  When we got to 98th, on our way to the entrance that we’d started from, Fanny told me to go ahead and take the 98th Street entrance—her concession that I had demonstrated mastery over the test.

  I knew then that I’d passed. I all but skipped back to my room, with Fanny and Helen struggling to keep up.

  Just an hour earlier I had been crying in my bed, without an ounce of hope—and now I was on top of the world!

  I knew I was getting better.

  I hoped I’d be going home soon.

  I returned to my room, feeling great. Now I’m thinking, Going home is not a matter of if, just when. And once I’m home, I’ll be working again, right? Everything will be fine!

  I had settled back into my room only for a few minutes when I received an unannounced visitor, a cardiologist named Dr. Sweeney.

  “We’ve tested everything in your heart,” he told me, which made me wonder what was coming next. “And everything looks fine,” he said, which gave me a sigh of relief. “But the last thing we need to do is implant a heart monitor so you’ll have a twenty-four-hour EKG. With that, they can get the data at the hospital or even by having you put a phone up to it and get the data we need that way. It’s a really easy procedure. We just go under the skin, not under your ribcage.”

  Okay, I said. If it meant I was one step closer to going home, I’d do just about anything.

  They didn’t waste any time. A few minutes later they knocked on my door to tell me they had a gurney outside my room. I hopped on, and they pushed me to the operating room.

  Now, I’ve been through enough surgeries to know the difference between out-patient surgery and in-patient surgery. When we got just outside the operating room I could see four doctors and nurses inside, prepping the same way they did to operate on my shoulder and my knee, which were obviously in-patient procedures. Soon enough they were shaving me and scrubbing me, and I realized, it’s legit. This is a serious operation.

  I asked, “What is going on?” No one answered.

  The guy from MedTronics, which makes the heart monitor, took it out of a plastic package and laid it on my chest, then outlined it with a Sharpie pen on my skin for the
doctor. It was about the size of an old-fashioned cigarette lighter.

  The doctors shot my chest with a few injections of Novocain, then asked me to turn my head. They draped one of those paper sheets over my head, with a hole to breathe, so I wouldn’t be able to see what they’re doing.

  Then, using the Sharpie-outline as his guide, the doctor started cutting my chest.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “Still feel that?”

  “Uh, yeah!”

  They gave me more Novocain, but it still felt like their scalpels were tugging at my skin. At that point I didn’t want to stop them again, and I’ve felt worse, so I didn’t say anything, and they kept working on my chest.

  One of the doctors said to the other, “Okay, there’s going to be a lot of bleeding here.”

  I knew that meant they were not just cutting the skin—they were cutting deeper, into muscle tissue or maybe even an artery. I felt my flesh burning and saw smoke coming up from my chest.

  I asked the technician near my head, “What the hell is going on?”

  One of the doctors heard this and said, “We have to stop the bleeding, so we’re going to cauterize this artery.”

  My eyes grew big. Artery? To smell burning flesh—a smell you cannot forget—is disturbing enough. To know that it’s yours is another thing entirely. I assumed they were going to implant the monitor and I’d be out of there in a few minutes. But then they brought out the little blow torch again, and the barbecuing of John Saunders resumed.

  I asked the technician, “Now what are they doing?”

  “They have to make a ‘pocket’ in your chest cavity and seal it with the torch to put the monitor in.”

  Holy smokes! It was one of the most invasive procedures I’ve endured, and I wasn’t getting anything more than you get for a couple of cavities—not even a Valium.

  They formed the “skin pocket” in about ten minutes, implanted the monitor, then sewed me up. The surgeon took off his gloves and said, “I’ll see you in a month for the first reading.”

  They told me they would take it out in three years, when the battery died, then wheeled me back to my room.

  What a day! I started at the bottom, then enjoyed a great high in the middle, but the surgery brought me back down to earth. When the Novocain wore off I started to feel the effects of what they had done, and it was extremely painful. I’m used to pain, but what threw me off was getting another reminder that I wasn’t getting better. I felt like I’d just taken a big step forward and two steps back.

  When was I going to get better? When was I going to go home?

  That same afternoon Dr. Greenwald—the rehab unit’s gatekeeper—stopped by my room to see how I was doing.

  We started talking about the new iPhone that Apple was about to launch. “I’m not sure if I’m going to get it,” he told me. “I’m going to watch the Apple press conference tomorrow on my iPhone and then decide.”

  So the next day I watched the press conference on my iPad, and I was sold. Later that day I was doing my new walking rehab, tossing the basketball back and forth with the orderlies. My newly installed “chest pocket” still hurt, but I wasn’t going to let on. I’d do anything to get out and go home.

  When we were passing by the orderlies’ desk I saw Dr. Greenwald and asked him, “Did you see the press conference?”

  “No, I couldn’t. How was it?”

  I told him all about the new features that were going to be on it, and he perked up.

  “Well, I’m definitely going to buy it!” I think he was also pleased to see how much of the information I had retained and could deliver spontaneously—good signs. That, coupled with my performance on the walking trip to Central Park the day before, I hoped might improve my chances of getting out soon.

  During my next lap around the orderlies’ desk Dr. Greenwald stopped me. “John, how’d you like to get out of here?”

  I could only stare at him and tear up. That’s when he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ve earned it. You’re ready.”

  Dr. Greenwald was no pushover. I had earned it. They had made me earn it! I knew I wasn’t 100 percent, physically or mentally, but I so needed to go home. I went straight to my room, grabbed my iPhone, and called Wanda.

  “Please come and get me! They’re gonna let me out—and I don’t want them to change their minds!”

  She was thrilled. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  I packed my bags. My roommate, a cranky investment banker, was getting out the next day. When his wife saw me getting ready to leave, she walked over to say, “I don’t know you, but you’ve been very, very nice to my husband. Thank you, and I hope everything works out for you.”

  She was sweet from start to finish. He, of course, said nothing.

  I didn’t care. I was too excited to get out.

  Don’t get me wrong: I knew I didn’t have a clean bill of health. I still had an incredible, nonstop headache, which started the day I fell in the studio and hadn’t let up, even six weeks later. I had to set up regular therapy sessions of all sorts to get back to where I’d been, physically and mentally, before my fall. I had doctors to see and a heart monitor to be tested.

  But I thought the road would only be a few weeks longer. Once I got home and got back in the chair that Sunday morning to host The Sports Reporters, all would be well.

  I travel a lot, usually every week, but I’d never been away from home longer than I had been during my stay at Mt. Sinai. True, just about everybody I really cared about had come to see me in the hospital—dozens of friends and relatives—and that was a wonderful thing. But during all those weeks in Mt. Sinai I never stopped believing that being home again would give my recovery a much-needed boost.

  It’s always good to come home, but man, after all I’d been through, it never felt better to walk through the door of my home. I felt like I’d been rescued and returned to a safe and loving environment. Just to be able to sit on my spot on the couch was incredible.

  I thought, This is the answer. I’m good, and things are going to be great from now on. I cannot imagine anything getting in my way.

  Just three days earlier I’d been sobbing uncontrollably, convinced I would never get better. My last resort would be shock therapy, or worse. Now I was back at home, feeling great.

  Depression made my highs higher and my lows lower. Worse, I believed that every high and every low would never end, no matter what side of the scale I was on. Now that I was on the right side of things, it was easy to believe my good fortune would never end.

  CHAPTER 29

  Ready for Prime Time?

  THE NEXT DAY I CALLED UP JOE VALERIO—THE PRODUCER behind The Sports Reporters—and casually told him, “I think I can come back to work this Sunday.”

  I knew I couldn’t handle the complexity of ABC’s Saturday college football show, with scores and news coming into my ear constantly, requiring countless snap decisions. But The Sports Reporters was taped, it only ran thirty minutes, and my main job was to serve as a facilitator for the three sportswriters on the show. I thought I could handle that.

  Joe is a great businessman, but he’s also one of the most caring people I know. He congratulated me on returning home, but as for me returning to the show, he didn’t hesitate.

  “John, don’t come back,” he said. “You’re not ready.”

  “Okay,” I said. But I wasn’t listening because I was convinced I was coming back anyway.

  A couple of days later Wanda took me back to Mt. Sinai for my first outpatient visit to see a host of doctors. The most critical was Dr. Tanvir Choudhri, a skilled neurosurgeon who took the lead on a lot of my care. I had come to trust this guy, and I was hoping he’d say I was good to work that Sunday.

  When Dr. Choudhri walked in he asked how I was doing. I said, “Great! I’m going back to work on The Sports Reporters this Sunday.” Never mind that Joe Valerio had said no such thing. I was certain of it.

  Dr. Choudhri is a big sports fan
who watches my shows regularly. He would have liked nothing more than to see me back on the set, but he was a doctor first. He looked me in the eye and said, “John, you are not ready for that yet.”

  “Whaddya mean?” I said. “I feel great!”

  “You’re not close to being ready,” he added, to dispel any illusions. He then asked me to rate my mental capacity, on a scale of one to ten.

  “I think I’m about an eight and a half,” I said. That was a hockey player talking.

  He stared at me, then said, “You’re about a five—at best.”

  Wanda chimed in. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I think that’s right.” I stared at both of them in disbelief.

  “You don’t realize what a traumatic brain injury you had,” Dr. Choudhri explained. “To expect to get back to an eight and a half out of ten in six weeks is ridiculous. I can tell just by talking to you, you’re no better than a five.”

  Hearing this was a kick in the gut. Seeing my dour expression, Dr. Choudhri tried to soften the blow.

  “Let’s do this,” he proposed. “Let’s target the first weekend in November for The Sports Reporters. If for any reason I think you can go sooner, you will. But let’s target the first weekend.”

  Wanda was nodding in agreement while I sat there, feeling like a ten-year-old who’s just been told he can’t ride his bike that summer. I didn’t think I could wait that long. That would mean I’d be out two full months without working—and during football season, normally the busiest time of year for me. But as much as I would have loved to, it wasn’t like I could just sneak back on the set and not have Dr. Choudhri notice. I simply had to wait.

  The next phase in my treatment would entail two full days of cognitive testing to see where I stood, and to determine how to get back to where I’d been. Dr. Wayne Gordon, head of Mt. Sinai’s brain trauma department, met with me and Dr. Emily D’Antonio, the woman who would be administering the tests a couple of weeks later. Dr. Gordon explained that the tests were quite rigorous, so much so that they wanted to be sure I was in good enough condition to fail the tests without being emotionally crushed. That got my attention.