So, just what DID happen to Ornauer?
Published: February 27, 2012
The rumour mill spun wildly as I was carried off on a gurney out of the Charles King Fitness & Sports Center last Tuesday, unable to continue the Far East Basketball Tournament march. Many people assumed the worst. One rumour suggested that I’d collapsed and died of a heart attack outside the facility and that Pacific high school sports was a widow.
Not quite. To quote Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ famous aside, reports of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated. To paraphrase Paul McCartney at the height of the “Paul is dead” rumours of the 1960s, if I had indeed died, I’d be the last to know.
The truth was, I simply could not continue. Chest pain that simply knocked me off the grid. But it had nothing to do with heart failure or blood clots or broken ribs.
I got sick on Feb. 3, the day I left Okinawa on my latest Pacific sports odyssey. A tickle in my throat, and I knew it was going to be a long month. The illness accelerated during a three-day visit to Misawa Air Base, then again during the DODDS Japan basketball tournaments at Yokota and the Far East wrestling tournament at Yokosuka. Developed a persistent, hacking cough that made it feel like somebody was kicking my chest.
Late on Feb. 17, while packing for the flight to Guam and the Far East basketball, I tripped in my billeting room and fell hard, flat on my face and chest, lacerating my jaw and forehead and aggravating the chest pain. So much that I could no longer cough, and was worried I might develop pneumonia. But I figured I could take care of all that once the Far East basketball tournaments ended.
By Tuesday, I could no longer continue.
Wheeled out of the place on a gurney by paramedics, treated by the doctors at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Guam, where they first ruled out a heart attack, then ruled out pulmonary blood clots, then showed via X-ray I did not have any cracked or fractured ribs. Properly medicated, I was able to finish out the week.
Online reference documents about chest contusions say it takes four to six weeks for them to properly heal. In the meantime, I still suffer from chest pain, but it’s far more manageable than this time last week.
Thanks to all for their prayers and concern. Got calls from as far away as Yokota and Iwakuni from those concerned. Sometimes, it takes something like that to make one realize how many people care. I love you all.
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