Nanner
02-28-2002, 04:51 PM
This is some pretty scary stuff. :uhoh: Wow. Just out of the blue. How horrible. But he sounds like he's healthy now. I guess he feels it's time to talk about it. Geez. This happened 5 weeks ago, and there was no news about it at all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14126-2002Feb27.html
His Life's Blood Was Flowing Out of Him
By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002; Page D01
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.
He must have chosen the guest bathroom because, sick as he felt, it was closer to his side of the bed than the master bath. Just out the door and around the corner. But it was a good thing, because when Brook Fordyce passed out from massive blood loss, the blood mixing with stomach acid to produce a deathly black splatter, his head hit the wall that separates the guest bath from the master bedroom and woke his wife.
And it's a good thing, too, that it was the guest bathroom because even now, almost five weeks since the blood was washed off the floors and walls and even the ceiling, Jaci Fordyce still can't set foot in the room where her husband nearly died. Perhaps she never will.
"It was too much," she said. "It was like a crime scene, a horror movie."
It would help to have answers, and maybe the anxiety and the dread will pass Friday. That is when Fordyce, the Baltimore Orioles' starting catcher, hopes to find out the results of a biopsy that should provide the answer to the question behind this horrifying episode: What caused the artery between Brook Fordyce's esophagus and stomach to rupture, spilling fivepints of blood into his stomach and leaving him within a thump-in-the-night of dying?
"I'm the kind of guy who wants to have an answer," Fordyce, 31, said, "and right now there's no answer."
The doctor's initial thought was that an ulcer had broken through his esophagus and pressed against the artery until it ruptured. "It made sense," as Jaci said, "because every major league catcher should have an ulcer." Multiple examinations, however, have ruled out an ulcer, as well as a bacterial infection.
Although his life nearly ended less than five weeks ago, you wouldn't know it to look at Fordyce as he prepares to catch the Orioles' exhibition season opener Thursday night against the Montreal Expos. All he knows is that one moment he was the picture of health -- a 6-foot, 190-pound rock with the kind of broad back and thick legs that only catchers and lumberjacks have -- and the next moment, more precisely, at around 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 24, he was lying on the floor of his guest bathroom in Stuart, Fla., with black blood coming out of both ends, unable to pick himself up.
"It's like you're going to sleep forever," he said. "You know when you're so tired that whatever you do, as soon as you lay on that bed, no one's going to wake you up? That's what it was like. It's like you're going into a deep sleep, and there's nothing you can do. If I was by myself, in some hotel room somewhere, I probably wouldn't be here right now."
The only warnings, if you can call them that, were some shortness of breath after his daily workout that morning, then an upset stomach, chills and a cold sweat at around 11:30 that night. "Aw, man," he thought. "I have the flu."
Feeling he was going to be sick, Fordyce got out of bed, where 4-year-old Blake -- the older of the Fordyces' two daughters -- was sleeping between him and his wife, and headed for the guest bathroom. When he threw up, it was black. He felt like there was more coming, so he laid down on the floor.
Hours passed. Fordyce floated in and out of consciousness. Apparently aware that it was coming out of the other end, too, he managed to sit on the toilet. But the blood couldn't get to his head, which is when he passed out, hitting his head on the wall.
Jaci Fordyce found her husband balled up, pale, convulsing, his hands like claws, his blood everywhere. "What is this?" he asked her. Jaci called 911, helping direct emergency vehicles to their secluded house by flashing the porch lights on and off.
By the time he made it to the hospital, he had lost fivepints of blood. One of the EMS workers, a surf bum in his spare time, later told him, "Dude, you only had a handful of blood left." In the hours before a doctor could arrive, they pumped him full of fresh blood even as they were pumping the seeping blood out of his stomach through a tube in his nose. Eventually, sometime around noon the next day, a doctor cauterized the ruptured artery and the bleeding stopped. Fordyce was in the hospital for five days, four of them in intensive care.
The weeks since have been about coming to grips.
"Mentally, I'm fine now," Fordyce said. "It was a freak of nature, I guess. There was nothing I could've done. It's not like I was driving and wasn't wearing my seat belt. There's nothing I could have done to prevent this. You can't beat yourself up about it. . . . My wife, she had a much harder time with it."
"You think, 'I live a nice, clean life. We're the model of happiness,' " Jaci Fordyce said, "and then in one minute my best friend, my husband and the father of my children could be gone. . . . It makes you hold each other a little tighter."
The daughters, Blake and Parker, did not wake up that night, thank goodness, despite the presence of a dozen emergency workers. But just in the last few days, Blake began asking her mother, "What happened to Daddy in the bathroom?"
"I think Blake knew what went on, but didn't know why," Fordyce said. "She said to a couple of people, 'I hope my daddy doesn't die.' And I told her, 'Daddy's fine. Daddy's just in the hospital. This is where people go when they're sick. But if she saw the sight that night, she would definitely be traumatized by it."
Fordyce had his agent, Mark Rodgers, call the Orioles the day after the episode and fill them in. "We were told he was okay," Manager Mike Hargrove said, "but that it was a real close call." At the time, it was only two weeks before pitchers and catchers were to report to spring training.
Fordyce had spent the entire winter working out with no fewer than three trainers, either as penance for last season's disappointing performance -- a .209 batting average and five homers in the first year of a three-year, $7.7 million contract -- or insurance that it would not happen again. He vowed he would be able to report on time, and he did.
The only remaining effects of the episode are a low but rising red-blood-cell count, some trouble catching his breath after running and a determination that the incident not be perceived as an excuse if the season is disappointing. "We held him back a little the first two or three days," Hargrove said, "then we turned him loose."
Spending his nights alone in the team hotel this spring, Fordyce is reminded how lucky he was to have been at home when it happened. But the resumption of baseball life, with its familiar rhythms and solitude, is a welcome thing, too.
"My family is both my strongest and weakest point," Fordyce said. "My strongest, because we're so close. But my weakest, because you try to hide what you're going through from them. You don't want them to hurt or feel the pain of possibly losing a loved one. Sometimes when I look at them, I just shake my head and wonder, 'What if?' "
Two hours up I-95 in Stuart, Jaci Fordyce feels the worry over having let her husband leave for another spring training and another season, and the gnawing dread of still not knowing what happened. The guest bathroom has been scrubbed and redecorated, but she still won't go in.
"I saw what I saw in there, and I don't want to go in. And honestly," she said, "I don't think I should have to."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14126-2002Feb27.html
His Life's Blood Was Flowing Out of Him
By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002; Page D01
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.
He must have chosen the guest bathroom because, sick as he felt, it was closer to his side of the bed than the master bath. Just out the door and around the corner. But it was a good thing, because when Brook Fordyce passed out from massive blood loss, the blood mixing with stomach acid to produce a deathly black splatter, his head hit the wall that separates the guest bath from the master bedroom and woke his wife.
And it's a good thing, too, that it was the guest bathroom because even now, almost five weeks since the blood was washed off the floors and walls and even the ceiling, Jaci Fordyce still can't set foot in the room where her husband nearly died. Perhaps she never will.
"It was too much," she said. "It was like a crime scene, a horror movie."
It would help to have answers, and maybe the anxiety and the dread will pass Friday. That is when Fordyce, the Baltimore Orioles' starting catcher, hopes to find out the results of a biopsy that should provide the answer to the question behind this horrifying episode: What caused the artery between Brook Fordyce's esophagus and stomach to rupture, spilling fivepints of blood into his stomach and leaving him within a thump-in-the-night of dying?
"I'm the kind of guy who wants to have an answer," Fordyce, 31, said, "and right now there's no answer."
The doctor's initial thought was that an ulcer had broken through his esophagus and pressed against the artery until it ruptured. "It made sense," as Jaci said, "because every major league catcher should have an ulcer." Multiple examinations, however, have ruled out an ulcer, as well as a bacterial infection.
Although his life nearly ended less than five weeks ago, you wouldn't know it to look at Fordyce as he prepares to catch the Orioles' exhibition season opener Thursday night against the Montreal Expos. All he knows is that one moment he was the picture of health -- a 6-foot, 190-pound rock with the kind of broad back and thick legs that only catchers and lumberjacks have -- and the next moment, more precisely, at around 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 24, he was lying on the floor of his guest bathroom in Stuart, Fla., with black blood coming out of both ends, unable to pick himself up.
"It's like you're going to sleep forever," he said. "You know when you're so tired that whatever you do, as soon as you lay on that bed, no one's going to wake you up? That's what it was like. It's like you're going into a deep sleep, and there's nothing you can do. If I was by myself, in some hotel room somewhere, I probably wouldn't be here right now."
The only warnings, if you can call them that, were some shortness of breath after his daily workout that morning, then an upset stomach, chills and a cold sweat at around 11:30 that night. "Aw, man," he thought. "I have the flu."
Feeling he was going to be sick, Fordyce got out of bed, where 4-year-old Blake -- the older of the Fordyces' two daughters -- was sleeping between him and his wife, and headed for the guest bathroom. When he threw up, it was black. He felt like there was more coming, so he laid down on the floor.
Hours passed. Fordyce floated in and out of consciousness. Apparently aware that it was coming out of the other end, too, he managed to sit on the toilet. But the blood couldn't get to his head, which is when he passed out, hitting his head on the wall.
Jaci Fordyce found her husband balled up, pale, convulsing, his hands like claws, his blood everywhere. "What is this?" he asked her. Jaci called 911, helping direct emergency vehicles to their secluded house by flashing the porch lights on and off.
By the time he made it to the hospital, he had lost fivepints of blood. One of the EMS workers, a surf bum in his spare time, later told him, "Dude, you only had a handful of blood left." In the hours before a doctor could arrive, they pumped him full of fresh blood even as they were pumping the seeping blood out of his stomach through a tube in his nose. Eventually, sometime around noon the next day, a doctor cauterized the ruptured artery and the bleeding stopped. Fordyce was in the hospital for five days, four of them in intensive care.
The weeks since have been about coming to grips.
"Mentally, I'm fine now," Fordyce said. "It was a freak of nature, I guess. There was nothing I could've done. It's not like I was driving and wasn't wearing my seat belt. There's nothing I could have done to prevent this. You can't beat yourself up about it. . . . My wife, she had a much harder time with it."
"You think, 'I live a nice, clean life. We're the model of happiness,' " Jaci Fordyce said, "and then in one minute my best friend, my husband and the father of my children could be gone. . . . It makes you hold each other a little tighter."
The daughters, Blake and Parker, did not wake up that night, thank goodness, despite the presence of a dozen emergency workers. But just in the last few days, Blake began asking her mother, "What happened to Daddy in the bathroom?"
"I think Blake knew what went on, but didn't know why," Fordyce said. "She said to a couple of people, 'I hope my daddy doesn't die.' And I told her, 'Daddy's fine. Daddy's just in the hospital. This is where people go when they're sick. But if she saw the sight that night, she would definitely be traumatized by it."
Fordyce had his agent, Mark Rodgers, call the Orioles the day after the episode and fill them in. "We were told he was okay," Manager Mike Hargrove said, "but that it was a real close call." At the time, it was only two weeks before pitchers and catchers were to report to spring training.
Fordyce had spent the entire winter working out with no fewer than three trainers, either as penance for last season's disappointing performance -- a .209 batting average and five homers in the first year of a three-year, $7.7 million contract -- or insurance that it would not happen again. He vowed he would be able to report on time, and he did.
The only remaining effects of the episode are a low but rising red-blood-cell count, some trouble catching his breath after running and a determination that the incident not be perceived as an excuse if the season is disappointing. "We held him back a little the first two or three days," Hargrove said, "then we turned him loose."
Spending his nights alone in the team hotel this spring, Fordyce is reminded how lucky he was to have been at home when it happened. But the resumption of baseball life, with its familiar rhythms and solitude, is a welcome thing, too.
"My family is both my strongest and weakest point," Fordyce said. "My strongest, because we're so close. But my weakest, because you try to hide what you're going through from them. You don't want them to hurt or feel the pain of possibly losing a loved one. Sometimes when I look at them, I just shake my head and wonder, 'What if?' "
Two hours up I-95 in Stuart, Jaci Fordyce feels the worry over having let her husband leave for another spring training and another season, and the gnawing dread of still not knowing what happened. The guest bathroom has been scrubbed and redecorated, but she still won't go in.
"I saw what I saw in there, and I don't want to go in. And honestly," she said, "I don't think I should have to."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company