The Flog – The Fabry Log

For some reason, I keep coming back to baseball. Maybe it is because of my youth and what a connection I had to my team, the Reds. I used to throw a tennis ball at the bricks on our house and listen to Al Michaels and Joe Nuxhall call the game. It was a wonderful, painful memory, because this little kid was alone most of the time. That solitude bred something in me, an affinity for stories, but it made me really lousy at relationships, and I’ve had to work hard at not being alone.

When I talked with my mother over the weekend, she took the call from the bathroom. My father who is 89 was watching the Reds game in the other room. I don’t know if I’ll be watching baseball at 89. I hope so.

So baseball has this mythical hold on me, and when I told the kids about the Rockies and their 14th inning comeback against the Giants last weekend, I felt the passion rising. There’s something about a comeback I can’t resist.

Two years ago Reagan had severe ringing in his ears. It was constant and getting worse. We thought it was tinnitus, which many people have. But when vertigo came, mind-numbing, brain-searing vertigo that did not let up, we went to more doctors, tried more medication. The vertigo led to severe vomiting. Reagan lost weight. His eyes would shake in his head. They would roll to the left, then reset in the middle, like a computer that’s lost its hard drive. It became so bad he couldn’t walk. We had to carry him to the bathroom so he could vomit. He would sit on the couch, look out the window at his siblings, and weep because he just wanted to get up and go outside to play. He wanted to be normal.

The doctors… I can’t go there. We had several doctors who said we were the problem. We didn’t push him enough. He couldn’t have constant vertigo. He needed a psychiatrist. Andrea finally talked with a doctor who believed her and said something was going on that wasn’t what had been diagnosed. Rabbit trails led to questions about our environment. The mold exposure. What mold can do to the brain, especially stachybotrys.

Wednesday night I took Reagan to his first baseball practice here in Tucson. I worried that the coach might push him too far. He’s not full strength. He’s skin and bones, really. But I let him go, knowing he has severe hearing loss on one side.

Another member of the team is deaf. He’s very good—he just can’t hear. You have to make sure he’s looking at you when you throw the ball to him. He just loves baseball.

So I watched Reagan run and throw and catch and do the drills the coach put them through. I remembered carrying him downstairs. The tears. The helplessness we felt each day his body withered. The prayers we prayed.

And now the hope we feel. He’s not there yet. Neither are we. But we’re on the field. We have a good coach. And a lot of people cheering. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to baseball.