Dist. 214 trainers watching for concussions

From the Daily Herald
Published: 10/24/2009 12:01 AM
This fall sports season, Rocco Tieri, certified athletic trainer at Wheeling High School, has treated 15 athletes with concussions. These athletes have included football players, cheerleaders, volleyball players and soccer players. For the last seven years, Tieri has used ImPact software to analyze the severity of the injuries and to determine the proper time to return to play. District 214 athletic trainers have always been at the forefront of sport concussion management and treatment.

On Oct. 27, Tieri and the other District 214 athletic trainers will meet with Dr. Dino Kostas (and Dr. Daniel Hurley) from the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch to discuss the latest sport concussion treatments. Dr. Kostas (and Dr. Hurley) worked very closely with the Red Stars professional (women’s) soccer team this year and has treated several of the players. (They) also consult with area high schools on managing concussions in football and other contact sports.

In light of recent concussion discussion in the National Football League, District 214 athletic trainers are being proactive in protecting and treating their athletes. To learn more about District 214’s concussion initiatives or specifics about the meeting with Dr. Kostas (and Dr. Hurley), please contact Tieri at (847) 718-7136 or rocco.tieri@d214.org.

More information can be obtained regarding CINN’s concussion management program at info@cinn.org

Concussion? If In Doubt, Sit It Out

By NESITA KWAN and BJ LUTZ
Updated 9:00 PM CDT, Thu, Oct 29, 2009

Athletic Director: “Better to look out for the next 60 years instead of the next 60 minutes of a football game”

Concussion: (n) an injury to an organ, especially the brain, produced by a violent blow and followed by a temporary or prolonged loss of function.

Up to a million high school and college athletes get them every year, and as more doctors learn about the long-term effects of the injury, the more concern there is about how they may impact the teen athlete’s brain.

While college football is where the injury may be the most obvious, a new study shows that athletes on the soccer field and on the basketball court get concussions almost nearly as often.

While an athlete may seem at first immediately following a significant fall or hard hit, alert adults may want to keep an eye out for signs of concussion hours after a game is over.

A new computer program appropriately named imPACT is helping. With imPACT, students take a special computer test before the season even begins. A player will take the test a second time after an injury. Those two scores are compared, and if they don’t match up, the player is out until they do.

Experts agree: if in doubt, sit it out.

That might be one of the hardest things an athletic director like Saint Rita of Cascia High School’s Zach Blaszak has to do, but enforcing complete rest until there’s a full recovery is crucial to protecting the young brain.

Also important, according to doctors and athletic trainers, is to recognize what’s happened out there on the field or in the court, and to immediately ask the right questions.

“Are you having a headache, are you having trouble concentrating or remembering, what was the last play you were in? Can you remember what happened to you,”neurosurgeon Dr. Gail Rosseau states as possible things to ask.

At the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, they’ve even created a card that parents can keep in their wallets that lists the signs of concussion, and the right questions to ask (see www.cinn.org to order your Ahead of the Game concussion reference cards).

“It’s better to look out for the next 60 years instead of the next 60 minutes of a football game,” Blaszak said.

High School District 214 Takes Proactive Approach to Setting Concussion Management Standards

CINN physiatrist Daniel Hurley, MD and clinical psychologist, Dino Kostas, Ph.D., recently participated in High School District 214’s sports-related concussion meeting. More than 15 athletic trainers representing each of the disctrict’s high schools were in attendace. Dr. Hurley and Dr. Kostas were asked to kick-off the meeting and provided:
- an overview of the Consensus Statement resulting from the 3rd International Conference on Concussion in Sports
- an outline of the factors impacting recovery, including a discussion of an athletes age, gender, and history of migraines
- considerations in determining return to play and the determination of asymptommatic status

CINN concussion experts strongly agree with the Zurich Consensus Statement conclusion that it is NEVER appropriate for a child or an adolescent to return to play on the same day as the injury. Furthmore, studies have shown that recouperating from a concussion takes longer in the adolescent player. In fact, some studies suggest it takes on average 26 days for an adolescent player to return to play after a concussion.

If you would like the CINN concussion team to help lead a discussion at your institution, please email ldombro@cinn.org for more information.

Dr. Rosseau Quoted in the Gold Health Guide

THE GOLD HEALTH GUIDE - Brain Fitness
Chief of surgery, Neurologic & Orthopedic Hospital of Chicago, Dr. GAIL ROSSEAU’s advice on keeping your brain sharp:
Stay mentally engaged. It’s the best way to keep your edge. Brain exercises are the latest fad, but anything that challenges you cognitively will help: Play Scrabble or chess, join a bridge or book club, or take classes.
Eat for your brain. Dark-colored vegetables - spinach, beets, etc. - and bright-colored fruits like berries, prunes, red grapes and tangerines in my desk.
Don’t ignore persistent headaches. Most aren’t serious, but occasionally they can signal an aneurysm or brain tumor. Three danger signs to check out promptly:
1. Headaches are worse in the morning.
2. Headaches that come on suddenly like a blinding thunderbolt
3. Headaches accompanied by nausea.

Use your head - protect it

Moms’ bike-safety effort makes helmets a must

By BILL DWYER, Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest
Staff Reporter

 

 

In the past year, four River Forest children have been injured in bike accidents. That worried and even frightened River Forest moms Susan Lucci and Sue Gee. Rather than complain and wring their hands, they decided to do something. They came up with a bike-safety program - All Heads in Helmets - that not only is educational and rewarding, it may also be changing some kids’ behavior.

Lucci and Gee get the word out that, while riding a bike, you’ve got to protect your head. They focus on safety gear proven to cut the risk that kids will lose their most irreplaceable asset: their brains.

“If you had a $100,000 crystal bowl, would you ride around with it unprotected?” Lucci asked, not so rhetorically. “No, you’d protect it carefully.”

“Why are we waiting for tragedy?” Lucci asked.

Over the spring and summer, All Heads in Helmets has hosted presentations around the village, at schools, at the park district and at the library. On Saturday, Sept. 12, they held one at the Clear Sky Festival in Keystone Park.

Lucci praised the village’s elected and appointed officials, saying they’ve been very supportive of the program.

Besides education, AHIH looks to incentivize safety, rewarding a few kids seen wearing helmets with raffled prizes like iPods, iTunes gift cards and even new bikes. Dan’s Bike Shop, Barnard’s Schwinn, Panera Bread and iTunes have all contributed prizes.

Kids can go to the library, park district and village hall and drop off the citations. Four tickets are drawn every month in June through August. A fourth drawing was held at the Clear Sky Festival; there will be another drawing in October.

While there’s the possibility police will take a tougher line in enforcement, they don’t appear inclined to do that yet. River Forest’s police chief, Frank Limon, an enthusiastic supporter of All Heads in Helmets, said he’d prefer to keep it voluntary.

“That’s the route we want to go,” he said. “We’re looking for voluntary compliance.”

Limon said his officers also liked the positive interaction that passing out the incentive citations affords them with the village’s youth, calling it a “win-win situation.”

There have been obstacles. While the program has been well accepted at the village’s two grade schools, Willard and Lincoln, it’s been more of a slog in the middle school.

“The older kids don’t think it’s cool,” said Lucci.

Whether they realize their mortality or not, older kids are getting hurt. A seventh grader was recently hit by a car backing out of a driveway and suffered broken ribs. Another child was stuck last year, suffering broken ribs, collar bone and wrist, but no head injury, despite his helmet being demolished.

Anna Gebert said her 13-year-old daughter Julia was crossing Ashland at Chicago in a crosswalk Thursday morning on her way to school when she was struck by a driver on her front wheel. Julia was knocked off her bike and sustained bruises, but no other injuries. She was wearing a helmet. Whether that saved her from head injury isn’t clear, and Gebert said that’s not the issue.

“Julia always wears a helmet,” her mom noted, acknowledging her sons do not. “They say, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I’m not going to fall.”

But cold statistics show that’s not necessarily true.

“A child is killed in the U.S. every day,” said Gail Rosseau, a River Forest resident who is a neurosurgeon. “An adult every six hours. A person is injured every four minutes.”

“One child in seven will receive a brain injury as a result of a bike injury,” she said. There is only one sure way to protect against devastating brain injuries while on a bike - all heads in helmets all the time. Every time. No exceptions.

“It’s impossible to overstate this,” she said. “Bike injuries are the No. 1 sports-related injury in the U.S.” Unhelmeted riders of all ages, she said, are 15 more times likely to be killed in a crash than those who skulls are protected.

No one is immune, said Rosseau. It’s not how old you are or experienced or how far you are from home or even if you avoid the street. The average distance from home for bike accidents is five blocks.

Her point was underscored recently when a 59-year-old Oak Park man, a veteran cyclist, was struck by a car door as he rode his bike Aug. 31. Besides a broken foot and painful bruising to his tailbone and arm, the man suffered a serious skull fracture.

The man’s wife, who asked that their last name not be used, underscored Rosseau’s comments - she wants people to know that age and experience make little difference in a biking accident. Her husband, she said, logged over 3,000 miles last year.

“He had 3,700 miles already this year,” she said. Doctors weren’t sure of the extent of his injuries, and whether he would fully recover. While he’s doing “remarkably well,” she said, he’s still home from work and not out of the woods.

“It’s just been a horrible thing to go through,” she said. “It’s been a nightmare.”

There is, Rosseau stressed, no way to predict how and when serious accidents will happen. Staying off the street won’t guarantee safety, either.

“Many of the most serious injuries are in driveways and on sidewalks, and not in the street,” she said. “Almost 78 percent of serious bike-related head injuries occur not at an intersection.”

Like Lucci and Gee, Gebert said she’s “frightened for the kids out there.”

“There are a lot of drivers out there who are distracted.”

“These head injuries take a long time to heal,” the wife of the 59-year old cycling veteran said.

If, in fact, they ever do. The clinical realities of brain injuries are chilling.

“I’d love to be able to tell you that neurosurgeons have found the answer to this and are able to put a scrambled brain, a damaged spinal cord, back together,” said Rosseau.

“The treatment is prevention,” she said. “What you want to do is take them back in time before the accident happened, upfront, where it counts.”

Rosseau refers to studies that show the effects of rapid deceleration on watermelons.

“The brain keeps moving when the skull stops,” she said. It can literally bounce around off the inside of the skull. The brain can be literally turned into mush.

“The brain is very, very soft,” she said.

The All Heads in Helmets program will likely become formalized soon.

“The River Forest Park Board Foundation has agreed to take it under their umbrella,” said Lucci. Rosseau suggest that, while the program is an excellent addition, and police enforcement is good, it can’t replaced parental involvement.

“Kids are 10 to 20 times more likely to wear a helmet if their parent do so,” she said. “Kids really do what you do, and not what you say.”

 

 

GUARDING THE BRAIN

September 21, 2009

By TONY GRAF tgraf@scn1.com
Sideline safety is more important than gridiron glory if a high school football player has just suffered a concussion on the field, say two groups conducting a public awareness campaign on the issue.

Getting back in the game is not toughness or heroism. In fact, a young player who returns to the playing field the same night has the potential to harm a developing brain — creating effects that are still not completely understood, said Joe Cunnane, head athletic trainer at Lockport Township High School.

The two groups conducting the campaign are the Illinois Athletic Trainers Association and the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch. As a member of the association, Cunnane is on board with the effort. The groups are raising awareness about the potential for concussion, the need for monitoring, and the importance of “sitting it out.”

But don’t the pros sometimes return to the game in football, hockey or other sports? Some young players may ask that question, but their situation cannot be compared with that of older, professional athletes, Cunnane said.

“One of the biggest mistakes that happens is that we watch athletes in professional sports, for instance, have a concussion and potentially return to the same game — and we make this person to seem like they may be a hero,” Cunnane said.

“The reality is: If that athlete is a 25-year-old man, he has a much different brain than a 17-year-old boy,” he said.

Simply put, there are too many unanswered questions about the impact a concussion has on the developing brain, Cunnane said.

Given the uncertainties, the two organizations are calling on all high school athletic departments to develop more stringent procedures on screening for and monitoring concussions:

The procedures being urged include:

• If there is a suspected concussion, a player should be benched for the game or until fully evaluated by a medical professional;

• Every high school should have a concussion testing mechanism in place. This may be as simple as a battery of questions or as advanced as a software program to measure concussions;

• There should be a team approach in handling concussions involving the athletic trainer, coach, physician, parent and teachers. This is especially important because concussions may not be symptomatic until several hours, or even days, after the hit.

Awareness campaign
This month, the two groups released a statement alerting high schools, parents and athletes about the dangers of returning to a game too soon.
“Studies show that young, high-school-age players who get back in the game and are hit again are at risk of ‘Second Impact Syndrome,’ a condition where the brain swells rapidly and catastrophically after a person suffers a second concussion before symptoms from an earlier one have subsided,” the statement said. “This syndrome has led to severe neurological problems and, in some rare cases, death.”

So though physicians may not fully understand the effect, there is evidence of an effect, Cunnane said.

Lockport seminars
Cunnane teaches in the physical education department at Lockport. He has been head athletic trainer for 16 years in the district.
In 2000, Lockport Township High School began hosting a concussion seminar, sponsored by the Illinois Athletic Trainers Association. Five such seminars were held in the earlier part of this decade. Athletic trainers from Illinois and other states attended. Top-level speakers from all over the country visited to discuss the issue.

At the seminars, one of the goals was improving the use of neurocognitive baseline testing.

In essence, a preseason evaluation — or baseline test — is conducted regarding the cognitive function of the brain. Later in the year, if the school suspects that a student athlete has suffered a concussion, that student’s cognitive functions will be tested again. Experts then can see if functions have been affected.

“This has become one of the gold standards in helping us make better return-to-play decisions in the last 10 years or so,” Cunnane said.

The most common symptom of concussion is a headache, Cunnane said. But recent studies show that amnesia, or memory loss, tends to be an indicator of a significant concussion that would require a longer recovery process, he said.

Visit www.cinn.org to order a wallet reference card that details the signs and symptoms of concussions. Consider ordering one — the cards are free — for every family on your team!

Illinois Athletic Trainers and Doctors Tackle Concussions

Hinsdale, IL, Sept. 4, 2009 -Ted Hirschfeld, athletic trainer for Hinsdale Central, is joining other Illinois athletic trainers and doctors, in a campaign to head off serious concussions in young athletes that may affect them later in life. Officials of the Illinois Athletic Trainers Association (IATA) and neurosurgeons at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch (CINN) are requesting that Illinois high schools have more stringent procedures on screening for and monitoring concussions.

Concerned about recent research indicating a younger, less developed brain that is concussed more than once is more prone to future neurological impairment than an older, mature brain, the IATA and CINN have created an awareness campaign to better educate coaches and athletic trainers that concussions should be taken very seriously.

They are recommending the following:

• If there is a suspected concussion, a player should be benched for the game or until fully evaluated by a medical professional.

• Every high school should have a concussion testing mechanism in place. This may be as simple as a battery of questions or as advanced as a software program to measure concussions.

• There should be a team approach in handling concussions involving the athletic trainer, coach, physician, parent and teachers. This is especially important because concussions may not be symptomatic until several hours, or even days, after the hit.

“I think many players and coaches don’t realize how dangerous a concussion really is,” says Dean Karahalios, MD, CINN neurosurgeon who is a champion for the cause of concussion prevention. “A brain injury is so different than any other injury because you can’t measure the full potential of the damage for days or even years to come. Because of this, we created an awareness campaign to educate football players, coaches, parents and teachers about the signs and symptoms of a concussion and the importance of “sitting it out.”

“In the past, football players were told to suck it up and get back in the game,” saysTed Hirschfeld, IATA Board Member and Athletic Trainer for Hinsdale Central High School. “But there are too many unanswered questions about the impact a concussion has on the developing brain. We are trying toeducate coaches, players and parents that sitting out a game or two could make the difference in a young player’s life.”

Studies show that young, high-school age players who get back in the game and are hit again are at risk of “Second Impact Syndrome,” a condition where the brain swells rapidly and catastrophically after a person suffers a second concussion before symptoms from an earlier one have subsided. This syndrome has led to severe neurological problems and in some rare cases, death.

Members of the IATA and CINN physicians are offering a wallet-size tool to help players, coaches, parents and teachers better identify and monitor concussions in high school athletes. The card is available as an educational tool for those who work with young athletes to assist in identifying signs of a concussion or other brain injury and to prevent further harm to the youngster. The purpose of the card is twofold: One side features warning signs that the coach or parent can observe and symptoms the athlete may report following a concussion; the other outlines a mental status test the coach or parent can initiate with the athlete they suspect of having a concussion. The wallet resource also includes a phone number at which a CINN concussion expert may be reached if, and when, help is needed. For more information, or to order the card, log on to www.cinn.org or email: info@cinn.org.

High schoolers at higher risk for concussions

Fast fact

The Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, along with trainers across the state, recently created a wallet-sized card to help coaches and parents identify and monitor high school athletes suspected of having a concussion. For more information, visit www.cinn.org.

September 17, 2009

By PATRICK MOONEY pmooney@scn1.com
For as progressive as football has become, it still amounts to trying to knock the snot out of the guy in front of you.

Four- and five-receiver sets have placed a premium on speed and athleticism, the ability to play the entire width of the field, nearly 54 yards. Players care more about health and nutrition — today Bear Bryant could never get away with forbidding them from drinking water during practice. Technology has changed the way the game is analyzed, enjoyed and understood.

» Click to enlarge image Naperville Central’s Conor Philbin (foreground) gets pumped up with his teammates before a rivalry game with Neuqua Valley on Sept. 4 at North Central College. “If anybody tells you they had a concussion (and) it’s not in the back of their head, they’re wrong,” Philbin said. And he knows.
(Danielle Gardner/Staff Photographer)
Fast fact

The Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, along with trainers across the state, recently created a wallet-sized card to help coaches and parents identify and monitor high school athletes suspected of having a concussion. For more information, visit www.cinn.org.
But all that hasn’t eliminated its underlying violence.

In a sense, Bill Hughes’ career path began as a 90-pound, 14-year-old freshman at Homewood-Flossmoor, where he sustained three concussions in two days. Hughes woke up in a hospital after the third one.

The Naperville Central trainer is now in his 37th year responding to these crises.

“When I started, I had kids that would get dinged, and 15-20 minutes (later they) claimed they felt fine,” Hughes said. “I sent them through the sideline assessment and if they passed everything, I handed them their helmet back and they kept on playing. Now how many of those kids are still having results of head trauma? I don’t know.

“The more research they do, the scarier it gets.”

Several former NFL players — and more than one from the Pittsburgh Steelers organization — who have died in recent years have been found with significant brain damage. These were middle-aged men close to dementia.

Micky Collins, a Steelers team physician, helped develop the ImPACT software used by Central the past several years. It’s a computerized test that gauges memory and reaction times. If a red circle flashes on the screen, click the mouse right. If it’s a blue square, click left.

“There’s no right or wrong. It just kind of shows how that kid’s brain processes,” Hughes said. “We run a baseline test on all incoming freshmen in football and soccer. (We keep) a hard copy and we throw that in the file.

“And so then during the four years, if they ever get dinged, we bring them back in. We go through our assessment of them and after they experience seven symptom-free days, we’ll take them back to the library and give them the test again.

“Until they can get back to that baseline score that they got before they were concussed, we won’t let them play.”

A study conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois published in July found that high school football players are at a greater risk for concussions than college ones.

Besides receiving less uniform medical coverage and attention, prep athletes sustain greater head accelerations after impact. College players experienced blows to the front of the helmet 10 percent less frequently and with less force. They are also more physically mature and better able to withstand the hits.

Last year, during the first sophomore game of the season, Central free safety Conor Philbin led with his helmet and the collision with a Waubonsie Valley running back left him with a concussion.

After the helmet-to-helmet tackle, Philbin had trouble walking. His vision was blurry, and he could smile on only one side of his face. He couldn’t stand the noise during the varsity game and left with a headache at halftime that night.

Philbin eventually passed the computer test, but admitted that it took most of last season to stop playing tentative. There are no lingering effects — though the junior has missed time this year after suffering a fracture of the radius during preseason practice.

But Philbin has learned to pump air into his helmet to keep it tight and braced for the next crash.

“If anybody tells you they had a concussion (and) it’s not in the back of their head, they’re wrong,” Philbin said.

Ahead of the Game — a Free Concussion Pocket Reference Tool

Your athletes are on top of their game, so why not be on top of yours when it comes to detecting a concussion?

A concussion is a serious brain injury, affecting the normal functions of the brain like concentration, memory and coordination—that’s why the best way to identify a concussion is to familiarize yourself with your athlete’s normal behavior and cognitive abilities before a concussion occurs. You know your athlete best, and in the event of a head injury, such insight will be invaluable to the recovery process.

You should also know that the signs and symptoms of a concussion don’t always present immediately after the point of impact. In fact, your athlete might not display signs of a concussion until hours—or even days—after the injury occurs. Your careful attention to changes in your athlete’s overall behavior will ultimately determine whether or not he or she regains optimal physical and mental health.

We’ve created a tool that’s small enough to fit in your wallet but big enough to take you through some steps to follow if you suspect a concussion in one of your athletes. If a concussion has occurred, remember that proper management is critical to preventing permanent brain injury, or even death in some cases. Treatment involves rest, rest and more rest of both the mind and the body. Questions? Contact your athletic trainer or CINN at 773-250-0500.

Hopefully, you’ll have a safe season and won’t have to use this card, but if you do, use it confidently and know you’ll be AHEAD OF THE GAME.

Wishing you a safe and successful season,

The concussion experts at CINN and the IATA.

click here to view a PDF of the Concussion Pocket Reference Tool

Prayers, healing could mean path to sainthood for Kansas priest

By ERIC ADLER

- McClatchy Newspapers

COLWICH, Kan. — On the first day - long before the lawyer from the Vatican showed up, long before talk of saints and miracles - young Chase Kear lay on the edge of death in the intensive care unit.

It was an accident: pole vaulting.

The 19-year-old athlete’s skull was cracked from ear to ear across his forehead.

His bleeding brain swelled. Machines hummed and beeped. Tubes jutted from his nose, mouth and veins.

Dozens of family and friends flocked crying to the St. Francis campus of Wichita’s Via Christi Regional Medical Center to wrap Chase’s parents, Paul and Paula Kear, in their arms and prayers.

It is to whom they prayed that is part of the wonder of the thing.

The supplications went to an Army chaplain - a local priest martyred long ago by the cold and brutality of a POW camp in North Korea.

The aura surrounding the late Father Emil Kapaun and his deeds is only strengthened by Chase’s story.

“It was miraculous,” Chase’s neurosurgeon, Raymond Grundmeyer, later would write. Now the Catholic Church must seriously ponder:

Should a new member from the Kansas prairie join its pantheon of Catholic saints? What really occurred in that intensive care ward?

“God won’t do this to our family twice,” one of Paula Kear’s sisters assured her.

Fifteen years ago the sister had lost her 16-year-old son when he climbed a tree and grabbed a power line.

Now this: the withering call on Oct. 2, 2008.

“There’s been an accident,” Chase’s coach said.

How many thousands of times had Chase completed this simple practice move, launching up with the pole and landing on the mat? No crossbar to clear. No pressure.

Small and lithe, 150 pounds of muscle and speed, Chase had been a state-ranked vaulter at Andale High School. He was in the second year of a track scholarship at Hutchinson Community College, 35 miles from home.

But on this autumn day, Chase felt something different when he launched.

The pole had more energy. More flex. It propelled him too far. His rear end caught the far edge of the mat. His torso snapped back, whipping his skull to the ground.

“It’s bad,” the coach told Paula. She could hear the womp of rotor blades of the helicopter landing to speed her unconscious son to Wichita. “It’s real bad.”

At the hospital, a chaplain led them to a tiny conference room, the place for terrible news. Paula’s older sister, Linda Wapelhorst, sat nearby. She would quietly request that a priest enter Chase’s room and perform the Catholic sacrament of “anointing of the sick,” most commonly thought of as last rites.

“She asked us if we wanted her to call our parish, Sacred Heart,” Paula recalled, “and put Chase on the prayer line and pray the prayer to Father Kapaun.”

That, some said, is when the miracle began.

Because seven weeks later - against all medical odds and his doctors’ abilities to explain it - Chase Kear came back.

“Hey, hi,” Chase, now 20, said cheerfully last week. He swung open the front door of his family’s home - a one-story ranch with a sculpture of the Virgin Mary and a tiny angel out front.

He stood strapping in shorts and blue sport shirt. His curly brown hair popped from the edges of his Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. baseball cap.

He wears his hair long to cover the scar from his surgeon’s last-ditch effort to save his life. That involved removing a saucer-sized hunk of his skull to reduce the pressure on his brain. Later, the hole was covered by a ceramic plate.

“I feel good,” he said to the obvious question and introduced his parents in a living room where framed prayers and four small crucifixes adorned the walls.

It’s also where, two weeks ago, the postulator from the Vatican, Andrea Ambrosi, came to talk. It is his task to collect evidence and present the cases of would-be saints back in the halls of St. Peter’s.

The Catholic Diocese of Wichita has offered Chase’s case as miraculous healing brought on, it believes, by thousands of prayers to the late priest Emil Kapaun, whom the diocese hopes to see canonized.

To declare an individual a saint, the Roman Catholic Church requires proof of at least two posthumous miracles on his or her behalf or one miracle if the individual died a martyr. Should the church accept Chase’s healing as divine, it would be the first miracle credited to Kapaun toward sainthood.

Ambrosi is also investigating evidence collected by the Wichita diocese of two other healings credited to Kapaun. One involves a 16-year-old girl and the other a man in his 80s.

“He sat on my front living room couch and took his coat off and loosened his tie,” Paula, a middle school language arts teacher, said of Ambrosi. “I’m just amazed. We’re not special people.”

But the Kears do believe something special, something divine, happened to their son. And Chase believes it, too.

“I was dead. Here I am now,” Chase said, and then of Kapaun. “I think he saved me.”

To be sure, the story of Emil Kapaun (pronounced kay-pin) is well-known in this region of Kansas, where a Catholic high school bears his name.

As recently as June, 11 worshippers completed a 59-mile pilgrimage in support of the cause to make him a saint.

Born in 1916 near Pilsen, Kan., Kapaun was a priest in the Wichita diocese who volunteered to be a U.S. Army chaplain. His selfless behavior became well-known during the Korean War.

“They say his pipe was shot out of his mouth by a sniper and that didn’t stop him,” said the Rev. John Hotze, who is coordinating the diocese’s cause to make Kapaun a saint.

After the 8th Cavalry Regiment stumbled into a Chinese ambush and disaster, Kapaun stayed behind with the wounded instead of joining the pell-mell retreat. Time and again, the gentle priest risked his life to keep the enemy from finishing off wounded Americans on the battlefield.

Taken prisoner, he suffered with other GIs in a camp of squalor and deprivation along the Yalu River. In the bitter winters of 1950 and 1951, hundreds would die of starvation and illness. Kapaun stole food to keep others alive before his own death from pneumonia after about six months as a prisoner.

The U.S. Army awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. Even now, former prisoners make the case to award him the Medal of Honor.

In Colwich, at Sacred Heart, it had become common to repeat “the Father Kapaun prayer” for people ill or troubled. The congregation had begun doing so regularly a few years ago to help a parish priest who had fallen ill and eventually died.

When Chase teetered near death, asking people to recite the prayer was natural.

Hundreds of people complied, every day, hoping to reach the combat priest.

Miracles come in forms - divine and medical.

The brain and its ability to heal contain their own mysteries, said neurosurgeon Gail Rosseau, chief of surgery at Chicago’s Neurologic & Orthopedic Hospital and a Catholic.

At times, she said, a brain injury can seem relatively minor when, suddenly, events turn tragic.

“I have also seen cases where I fully expected the worst and prepared the family, where I didn’t think they would make it. Happily, I was wrong.”
What sets this case apart is that Chase’s neurosurgeon, Raymond Grundmeyer - according to the Wichita diocese - apparently told the Vatican investigator Chase’s recovery was “miraculous.”

In a short e-mail message to The Kansas City Star, he wrote: “We didn’t think he was going to survive.”

Ambrosi reportedly met with Chase’s physicians, studied medical reports and looked at scans of the battered brain.

The Kears said that doctors told them that if Chase survived, a subsequent infection could kill him later. If he survived that, he could be severely brain-damaged.

“I remember going to work one day,” said Paul Kear, who sells farm chemicals, “trying to figure out how I’m going to tell Paula that Chase is going to be a vegetable.”

But Chase got better. Not slowly. Fast.

Seven days after his surgery, he moved a hand. Then around day 10, a nurse put a line in his left arm. Chase swatted it away.

“Chase, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand,” a nurse said around day 12. A squeeze.

Paula gave him a kiss good-night. He puckered his lips.

“We just kept praying,” the Father Kapaun prayer, Paula said. “I prayed it at least morning, noon and night. I would always pray it.”

The family taped up the prayer near Chase. The diocese sent over a laminated picture of Kapaun set with a minuscule relic, a piece of Kapaun’s clothing a quarter the size of a contact lens.

On day 17, he was moved from the ICU to a regular room and, on day 19, to a rehabilitation hospital. He was weak, unable to stand on his own. That was Oct. 21.

One month later, Paula said, “he walked into our home by himself. He went to a football game.”

Chase hasn’t thought too much yet about the larger ecclesiastical questions:

Why him? For what purpose? Does this mean he’s supposed to do something special with his life?

“It does make me wonder.” But he will leave it at that for now.

His parents think that maybe the idea was to bring others closer to their faith or perhaps even to help Kapaun become a saint.

“Mostly people are just glad I’m still here,” said Chase, although there have been scares and signs that a miracle doesn’t necessarily equal perfection.

Chase has had two small seizures since being released from the hospital. “I’m not exactly the same guy,” he admits.

His temper is shorter, he said, and erupts all too easily these days, something he’s working to control. His speech is a shade slower and he thinks his wit is not as sharp.

“I used to be real funny, real quick with the comebacks,” he said. “My mind doesn’t work like that anymore.”

He has felt heartache: a breakup with a girl he’d asked to marry.

He has a summer job, cutting lawns for the school district. He lifts weights and plays touch football with friends at night. Next year he plans to return to junior college to finish studies to become a firefighter. He hopes to help out as an assistant pole vault coach on the track team.

“I miss it,” he said, and thinks about taking a pole and soaring through the air again. His timing is off, though, and he knows he may not be ready.

He has felt one more change as well.

Church. Sundays.

“It has a lot more meaning,” he said. “I go in there and pay attention more to what the priest is saying. When I pray, I’m really praying hard.”

And Kapaun’s cause?

Although sainthood is conferred regularly, the process can take centuries. Of some 10,000 saints, only two were born in the United States.

So Ambrosi’s work is not done. The man some call the saint-maker is expected back in Kansas in January.

“Before, I used to say, ‘I hope this would happen in my lifetime,’ ” said Hotze of the canonization. “Now, I say: ‘When it happens in my lifetime.’ ”

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