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Letter to the editor

Football player beats odds with recovery

By ERNEST HOOPER
Published September 21, 2007

Wearing his No. 9 Brandon Cowboys jersey, Chris Casanova walked onto the football field last Saturday and away from death.

Each step he took toward the waiting arms of his father and three brothers spelled a word: M-I-R-A-C-L-E.

It was homecoming, and tradition calls for players and cheerleaders of the youth football organization to be greeted at midfield by family and friends in a special pregame ceremony. How appropriate.

After all, 15-year-old Chris had come home from an all-terrain vehicle accident that left 23 fractures in his face. He had come home from Tampa General Hospital after spending nearly five weeks with the trauma team. And the infectious disease team. And the facial reconstruction team.

He had come home from a battle with bacterial meningitis and 11 intravenous bags pumping medicine into his body. He had come home from an induced coma, and holes being drilled into his skull to alleviate pressure.

He had come home from not one, but two brushes with death.

As the Cowboys' secretary, I happened to be handling the public address announcements for the varsity team. I called out the name - Chris Casanova - and looked up expecting to see his family but not him.

But there he was, walking into a bear hug from his dad, Tom McGillem, who has been Chris' father since he was 3 months old.

"I grabbed him and I just held him," McGillem said. "I thought about how blessed our whole family was because God had blessed him with his recovery. The emotions ran from A to Z."

In that moment, everything McGillem and his family had endured in the past 36 days flashed before his eyes. The Aug. 10 call he got from the parents of one of Chris' friends, telling him there had been an accident. The medical helicopter passing overhead as he raced down State Road 60. Chris' unrecognizable face, his head swollen like a basketball, his eyes the size and color of two big plums and his ears filled with blood.

The chaplain, the ventilating machine, the nurses, the heart monitor, the prayers - all those images blurred in his mind until they reached one joyous portrait.

Chris was riding a four-wheel ATV near State Road 39 in Lithia, witnesses told McGillem. He came out of the woods and onto asphalt. Chris, riding for the first time, tried to make a turn. The tires slipped on gravel and the ATV hit a large tree. Chris was wearing a BMX helmet, but crashed face first.

The Tampa General doctors said Chris might have a chance at recovery if he could get through the first 24 hours, but they made no promises. McGillem and his wife, Leah, spent every moment of those first hours beside Chris' bed.

During those initial hours, something strange happened. The pump that kept Chris sedated malfunctioned. He awoke briefly and looked at his parents. Leah said, "Chris, we're here." And then he went back under.

"For us, it provided a bit of hope," his father said. "But I can't begin to tell you the hopelessness that my wife and I felt through the whole process. You get so caught up in work and then God throws you this big old curve ball and you can't do anything but accept it."

Chris made it through that first night and showed some positive signs. But a week later, bacterial meningitis invaded his brain. Doctors told Tom, who basically shut down his Total Serve Air Conditioning business to spend every free moment at the hospital, to go home. Chris took a turn for the worse.

"I prayed next to him and said, 'God, this is bigger than me. I put my son in your hands.'"

Meanwhile, Cowboys parents and supporters collected money for the McGillem family during a game. With school starting that Monday, they also donated clothes and back-to-school supplies for the three younger brothers.

And they prayed.

"The way they chipped in financially was awesome, but it was the prayers that meant so much to us," said Tom, who was visited by several Cowboys parents. "They were like a church congregation. People kept saying how sorry they were, but they weren't just patting me on the back. They had tears in their eyes."

Again, Chris defied the odds and beat the infection. Then he went a step further. Well, several steps.

On Sept. 2, the family waited for Chris in the cafeteria to celebrate his birthday. Tom pushed the wheelchair up to the door, and then Chris stood and gave them a present.

"He walked right in there," Tom said. "They were Frankenstein steps, but their eyes got bigger than saucers. They couldn't believe it."

The doctors were also stunned. The facial reconstructive team, which had prepared to put him back together with plastic and titanium, told Tom that God had done a better job than they could ever think about doing. There would be no need for surgery. Like jigsaw puzzle pieces falling into place, the fractures healed on their own.

Still, he faced months of rehabilitation - or so the doctors thought. They told them to set goals, so Tom reasoned that Chris could aim for walking out with his teammates at homecoming. They would take him out of the hospital for a day, wheel him up to the edge and hope that he could make it to midfield.

But with each passing day, Chris' recovery accelerated. He regained the ability to walk, talk, eat, read and dress himself. Doctors released him on Sept. 7. A week later, he took the Cowboys' flag after the pregame introductions and raced onto the field with his teammates.

"To see the joy on his face, to see him laugh and smile with his teammates was worth more than a thousand words.

"He was a kid again. He wasn't a patient anymore," Tom said.

Ernest Hooper also writes a column for the Tampa & State section. He can be reached at hooper@sptimes.com or 226-3406.

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 07:48:53]