Back in the game

H-BR’s Bradburn plans to return to baseball after brain injury

HINCKLEY – Cory Bradburn holds Day 3 in his right hand.

It’s a CT scan of his brain, three days after being struck in the head by a baseball off the bat of his friend and Hinckley-Big Rock High School teammate, Colton Craig, in a fluke occurrence in Bradburn’s backyard in Hinckley on May 7.

The left side of the scan looks like a piece of cauliflower managed to find its way inside Bradburn’s brain. The truth is, the scan says Cory is closer to death than life.

His mom, Terri Bradburn, a nurse, takes a finger and traces the black line that surrounds the white area that doesn’t resemble the rest of Cory’s brain, which, when the scan was taken, was swelling to dangerous levels.

“As it goes on, all of that black gets everywhere inside of his brain and it’s pretty bizarre,” she says as she points to another portion of the scan. “This is blood. This black right here is all swelling. As the days went on, it went all throughout his brain tissue and pushed everything over.”

His brain was shifting and it very quickly became a major concern for neurologists at Rockford Memorial Hospital.

The impact of the ball, “a shot, at least 100 miles an hour off the bat,” as Craig describes it, caused Cory’s brain to swell and shift. Cory’s skull had three fractures, he couldn’t hear out of his right ear and those were the least of his worries.

Pressure built inside Cory’s brain with no outlet. The next step was the one neurologists feared most. If the brain swells too much, it can cause a compression of the brain stem, which would stop all respiratory functions.

It’s called a brain herniation. And it would have killed him.

Thankfully, that step never arrived.

The difference between what likely would have happened and what did happen is measured in brain waves, fickle things that go haywire and return to normal for sometimes unknown reasons.

Concrete explanations don’t exist as to why Cory is still alive, much less planning a comeback to baseball next spring for his sophomore season.

What happened after the swelling stopped was even more unbelievable. Cory got better. Quickly. He left the hospital 13 nights after he entered and is proud to say he’s been out to see “Transformers 2” four times this summer.

The Bradburns said neurologists used words like “someway” and “we don’t know how.” Terri calls it a “miracle.” There is little evidence to suggest otherwise.

In the simplest of terms, his brain, somehow, found a way.

No big deal...right?

May 8 was going to be the best day of Cory’s freshman season with the Royals.

A versatile freshman just hitting his stride, Cory wanted to get some extra work in before H-BR played the Little Ten Conference leaders, Somonauk, at home. Craig wanted the same thing and the two agreed to do some practice at the batting cage at Bradburn’s house.

The Bradburns have an “L” screen, designed to keep the pitcher safe from almost all hits.

All Cory can remember about getting hit is hearing the sound of the bat crushing the ball and trying to get his glove up in time to block it.

“I blacked out for a second and I woke up just as I was falling to the ground,” he said. “All of my muscles, I just couldn’t move them. And it felt like the ball was still stuck in my head.”

Craig couldn’t believe it and checked on Cory before going inside the house to get Cory’s dad, Tim.

“Ninety-nine times out of 100 he’s behind the ‘L’ screen and another 99 times out of 100 I don’t hit the ball that hard,” Craig said.

But, other than a sharp headache, Cory felt fine after a few minutes. He cracked jokes and hung out with Craig for about another hour.

Then he couldn’t hear anything out of his right ear. Tim called Terri for advice, and father and son headed to the emergency room at Kishwaukee Community Hospital.

Cory wasn’t worried and thought he would actually play against Somonauk the next day.

“I had my phone and I was texting all my friends saying don’t be worried if I’m not at school tomorrow,” he said. “I’m just going to the hospital.”

Cory soon learned his situation was much worse than he thought.

After an initial CT scan at Kishwaukee, doctors decided to move Cory immediately to Rockford to meet with a neurosurgeon. In the middle of the night, he was moved from the emergency room to the pediatric unit, then to the pediatric intensive care unit.

That’s when he was told his life was in jeopardy.

“I was in tears,” Cory said. “He’s telling me I can’t play baseball again.”

He went from cracking jokes and texting his friends, telling them not to worry, to tears and fighting for his life.

“You just think about all of your family and friends you might not get to see again,” Cory said. “You’ll never get to live your life to the fullest.”

So the next four days in intensive care were touch-and-go. Scans didn’t show improvement while more and more fluid built up in his brain. Cory had to be woken up every hour so doctors could check his pupils to see if there were any changes, meaning his brain was shifting more.

Cory became at risk for seizures at any time when the swelling almost reached the brain stem. He was so sensitive to light that the curtains in his hospital room were drawn 24/7 and the lights were kept off as often as possible.

Then, for whatever reason, the swelling stopped. After a few days, it started to go down at a much more rapid pace than anyone expected.

“Knock on wood, we just don’t know,” Tim said. “His brain waves just found a way to get around the injury.”

Apparently out of the woods for the time being, the Bradburn parents could breathe again after trying to keep it together throughout the whole process.

“I think it’s a miracle because I see a lot of head injuries,” Terri said. “To not have any lasting effect from it is just a miracle so far.”

Tim, an assistant coach with the Royals, put together a video of Cory’s teammates telling him to get better. Craig made several appearances in the video, dropping in on other players’ messages to say “My bad.”

Craig said he tried to not let what had happened get to him too much, and the constant updates from Tim helped.

A few days later, Cory went for a short walk in the hospital. It was difficult, but he managed to do it, to the surprise of the doctor.

“He told the neuropsychiatrist that he couldn’t believe how I managed to walk and talk and think straight,” Cory said.

The road back

All Cory wanted to eat was Chicken McNuggets.

After going without food for three days because of his situation, he was craving something normal.

“I just had a taste for it,” he said.

It was his first three meals when he could once again eat. A little thing, but one that meant so much.

He was able to see two of his older sisters after not being allowed to have visitors other than his parents for three days. Friends came to visit. He learned he wouldn’t have to take finals and received the grades he had at the time of the injury.

Then, amazingly, Cory got the OK to go home.

When he arrived, his sisters had arranged every helmet Cory had on the kitchen table, with the added touch that it was a present from his cat, Chico.

Not wanting to stay away from baseball, Cory showed up for the Royals’ regional and sectional games.

“It definitely gave us a boost,” Craig said. “He gave us a good sense of humor. He was wearing a helmet with a band-aid on it.”

That sense of humor extends beyond the baseball field. Cory’s Facebook photo is a copy of one of his brain scans.

Under orders to do little at home, Cory quickly grew tired of lying around the house and occasionally going to games, so he took another step forward in his recovery.

He went outside. And he played.

Every night, he grabbed his mitt and a little rubber ball and started throwing it off the backboard in his driveway, sometimes until as late as 2 a.m.

Taking it slow hasn’t really been in his nature for this entire process, so it hardly comes as a surprise that Cory found his way back to the batting cage – with tennis balls and a helmet this time – two weeks after his return home.

“It felt weird,” he said. “Just being able to play again, just proving the doctors wrong.”

Hard-headed as it sounds, there was also the little matter of convincing the doctors he could play competitive sports again.

“We went back for a checkup and (the doctor) said I shouldn’t play until college,” Cory said. “The whole time I was thinking there’s no way that’s going to happen.”

After being told his career in athletics was through, to doctors telling him to wait until college, Cory’s rapid recovery has doctors leaving the decision up to his parents, providing Cory continues to pass tests down the road. He’ll likely wear a fielding helmet for baseball and will avoid all contact sports until the spring.

Cory’s determination to continue playing hasn’t dwindled. He has a full day of tests in October, the day after his birthday, that will play a large role in determining if he can play at full speed again.

“I’ve been starting to hang out with my friends more often lately and I’m doing more things physically,” he said. “But I’m a little out of shape to compete with everyone.”

Given his rapid recovery from the brink of something awful, getting back into shape doesn’t seem like much of a hurdle.