Concussions get a closer look

CINN, in conjunction with the Illinois Athletic Trainers Association, is working hard to raise the awareness of concussions in Chicagoland. We applaud the article in the Chicaogo Tribune highlighting the work being done throughout the area. We urge all parents, coaches, athletic trainers and supporters of youth sports to visit www.cinn.org and order copies of Ahead of the Game, a concussion reference tool that fits in a wallet. Order one for yourself, and one for every family on the team.

chicagotribune.com

Schools increase awareness of injuries that killed 50 young football players in 10 years, and how to diagnose them
By Mike Helfgot

Special to the Tribune

October 7, 2009

Josh Jaremko and a hard-charging linebacker butted helmets during a routine drill of the sophomore football team at Hinsdale Central High School in August — one of hundreds of collisions during that practice session.

He didn’t feel quite right, but returned to the field the following day.

“I especially did not think it was a concussion,” Jaremko said. “I just thought it was a good hit and I would be fine.”

Then he got hit in the same spot again and was diagnosed as having suffered two concussions. He was at risk of what is known as second impact syndrome, a condition where the brain swells rapidly and catastrophically when a second injury occurs before the first one heals.

Jaremko endured headaches for a couple of weeks and doctors’ visits before being cleared to play within a month.

Sports-related concussions have been in the news recently and are the subject of a new effort by athletic trainers in Illinois to make more coaches, parents and athletic directors aware of the symptoms and dangers of playing again too soon.

A 17-year-old, Drew Swank of Valley Christian High School in Spokane, Wash., suffered head injuries in a September game and died two days later. University of Florida star Tim Tebow was knocked out of a recent game with a head injury and it’s unclear when he might return to play.

A New York Times report found that from 1997 to 2007, head injuries caused deaths to at least 50 football players on the high-school level or younger. And another study has found former NFL players are far more likely than the general population to suffer from dementia.

High school players are vulnerable because their younger brains are at greater risk of serious and long-term injury because the brain tissue is less developed and more easily damaged.

The Illinois Athletic Trainers Association is teaming up with the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch to get the word out about how to diagnose a concussion.

Some states are attempting to tackle the issue through legislation. Washington passed a law in May mandating guidelines for treatment and education for coaches and parents. Several other states are considering a similar law.

Michael Sullivan, trainers association president and athletic trainer at Downers Grove North, said State Senator Bill Brady initiated a meeting on concussions with the trainers association and the Illinois High School Association, but those groups did not recommend pursuing legislation. It would be difficult to implement and enforce, Sullivan said, and many schools would not have the resources to comply.

Instead, the trainers association is trying to get the word out through an informal word-of-mouth campaign and the distribution of an educational wallet card it collaborated with the neurosurgery institute to create.

One side of the card lists the symptoms for athletes (headache, sensitivity to light/noise, sluggish, dizzy, double vision, nausea, memory/concentration problem, change in sleep patterns) and the other displays the warning signs for coaches and parents (forgetful, clumsy, irritability, depression, forgetfulness).

The card can be downloaded at CINN.org.

“We’re trying to get the word out any way we can,” Sullivan said. “We’re trying to educate parents, coaches and kids on the identifiers.”

He said Illinois is typical of a national study that showed only 42 percent of the high schools in the nation have an athletic trainer on staff.

“Even within the Chicagoland area, it’s not 100 percent. Many schools hire an outreach trainer, some for game coverage, some for weekly checks. This is not meant to substitute for an athletic trainer or a physician, but at least this gives people an idea.

“There probably are not enough hours in the day for this kind of a campaign, but we can at least distribute literature that get passed on and get the word out to youth groups,” Sullivan said.

Detecting a concussion can be tricky, especially in a sport where playing with pain and discomfort is ingrained. In Brian Connor’s case, the 2009 Hinsdale Central graduate doesn’t remember feeling any — or anything immediately following a helmet-to-helmet hit in a playoff game last season. After seven plays, a teammate realized he was playing erratically and got Connor removed from the game before any more damage could incur.

“I put my head down on top of his, and the next thing I knew it was seven plays later and I’m waking up and talking to our trainers,” Connor said. “I had no idea I was out there.”

More than 3.5 million sports-related concussions occur each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Brain Injury Association of Washington. Though much is still unknown about concussions, the number continues to rise. Some schools are taking steps to react more quickly and accurately. Barrington senior Tyler Lindroth took a blow to the head in practice in early August, and before he could try to convince anyone he was fine, his coaches forced him off the field. His concussion came with two weeks of short-term memory loss, but by the end of the month, he was cleared and back on the field.

“Our school is pretty good about education on concussions,” Lindroth said. “I wanted to keep playing but they knew something was up.”

Barrington is one of 52 schools in Illinois that uses computer software from a company called ImPACT (Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing). Brain injuries don’t necessarily show up on an MRI or CT scan, but this ‘neurocognitive’ testing has proven effective in determining when an athlete with a concussion has returned to normal. The program provides a baseline test to athletes at the start of the season, which serves as a basis for comparison following a head injury. According to Barrington trainer Kevin Stalsberg, the package of 1,000 baseline tests and 100 post-injury tests costs $1,000.

“We see more concussions here,” Stalsberg said. “We’re managing three to five a week. I don’t know why that is. I’m hoping that it’s because of the education.”

Other schools can’t even afford an athletic trainer, let alone cutting-edge computer software. Harlan is among the Chicago Public Schools that does not have one.

“For football games, we have a medic on duty from the Chicago Fire Department,” said Ted Tines, Harlan’s assistant athletic director. “No one has been formally trained to look for at the signs of a concussion. We just have to go with basic common sense — dizziness, blurry vision, lightheaded. We haven’t had any cases this year.

“The board is limited with the amount of funds. I used to go to clinics, but it’s become a financial issue. Are we getting proper training? No. They would tell you they would like to send us, but it is just a financial issue.”

While some schools can’t afford baseline testing, Joseph Reda, the athletic director at Bloom in Chicago Heights, believes the price tag is reasonable enough to pursue with his board.

“I was expecting to hear 30 grand,” Reda said. “Within reason, nothing is too expensive for our kids.”

CINN’s Dr. Gail Rosseau to deliver keynote lecture at Duke University

Duke’s Sanford School Hosts Lectures on Global Finance, Health Care

Weekend celebration includes keynote lectures by two public policy leaders

Thursday, September 24, 2009

DURHAM, N.C. — Richard Fisher, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and neurosurgeon Gail Rosseau, chief of surgery at the Neurologic & Orthopedic Hospital of Chicago, will deliver keynote lectures during a weekend celebration of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.                                          
                                                                                        
 Prominent journalists Cokie Roberts of NPR and John Harwood of CNBC will engage the lecturers in conversation. Both events are free and open to the public.

The talks are part of a series of events marking the Sanford School of Public Policy’s inaugural year. The former institute became Duke’s 10th school on July 1.

“A year ago, the nation was staring straight into the jaws of economic ruin,” Fisher said in a recent address. “The Federal Reserve stepped into the breach and did what central bankers are called to do: We assumed the role of lender of last resort … instituting unconventional measures to keep the financial lungs of the global economy from collapsing.”

“Policy experts have a very valuable role to play, and their counsel must be in partnership with the people in the trenches putting policy into action,” said Rosseau, who regularly witnesses the consequences of flaws in the current U.S. health care policies through her practice.

 

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.

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.’ ”

Wife of CINN Patient Thanks Dr. Mkrdichian and Staff

I saw the article on Dr.Mkrdichian in the Sun-Times and it got me to thinking about our story with Dr. Mkrdichian and CINN and I thought this may be a good time for me to share it. My husband (Bill) was diagnosis by CINN back in 1992 with a disease called Von-Hipple Lindau which caused my husband to have over 25 surgeries in the years following, he had brain surgeries, 4 Gamma Knifes, lost both kidneyâ s, did dialysis, had a kidney transplant, eye surgeries and endured a month long coma. In 1992 Dr.Mkrdichian performed the first of 11 brain surgeries on Bill and from that moment on we were bonded with Dr.M and the stuff at CINN for over 16 years, and they saw and helped us through a lot during those 16 years. My husband had to have MRIs s every six months along with a doctor’ s appointment to see Dr. Mkrdichian and sometimes he delivered us good news and sometimes bad, but Bill and I always felt safe knowing it would be Dr.Mkrdichian doing the surgery.  Sometimes I think Dr. Mkrdichian was more worried than we were, that’s how safe he made Bill and I feel. I still can remember the big smile on Dr. Mkrdichian’s face as he’d walk down the hallway after each surgery he performed to tell me that Bill was fine and that Bill was something special. Then there’s the nurses who some of them we’ve known since 1992, and saw Bill and I through a lot including that month long coma, those nurses are very special people of which I will always be thankful of , and in some weird way they were like our second family. I can not thank them enough for all the things they did we for us over those 16 years, you always took such good care of Bill that I never had worry. Bill and I entrusted Bill’s life to Dr.Mkrdichian and that great stuff at CINN many, many times, and they never let us down, so all I can say is thank you and know how special you all were in our lives.
I lost my best friend, my beloved husband (Bill) April 9th, 2008, and the world lost something very special that day.
Thanks Dr. Mkrdichian and Bill really liked you a lot.Lynn

Dr. Gail Rosseau, CINN Neurosurgeon Still in Running for US Surgeon General

Colleagues,

As reported in MedScape Today … There is no shortage of interested candidates for the country’s top public-health job, say officials. The search for the next US surgeon general is back on after CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta announced late last week that he will no longer be pursuing the role. Among those mentioned in MedScape article are:

Acting Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson.

Gail Rosseau, MD, from the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, in Illinois, was on a short list for the job late last year. Dr. Rosseau is director of cranial base surgery and is 1 of 300 female neurosurgeons nationwide. She has declined to comment at this time.

Arthur Kellermann, MD, professor and founding chair of the department of emergency medicine at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, was named in the New York Times as another potential candidate.

Also expressing interest in the position is George Lundberg, MD, a former editor at Medscape and a previous editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “If done right, this can be the most important public-health job in the world,” Dr. Lundberg said.