The moment is so close now, tantalizing him like a dream present he soon can unwrap. This is why sleep often escapes Neil Parry, why he twists and turns through those long nights thinking of the past and the future.
He remembers the injury, the compound fracture of his right leg he sustained while covering a kickoff for San Jose State during its game with Texas-El Paso in October 2000. He remembers the complications that followed and the organism that infected his leg, nearly costing him his life and finally forcing doctors to amputate his right foot and ankle.
He remembers the hospital room, remembers lying there a day after he lost part of himself and watching “Monday Night Football” with his dad, Nick.
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to run again?” he remembers asking his father.
“Yeah, you’ll be able to run again,” his father replied. “Shoot. What are you talking about?”
The son then asked: “Hey, if I can run, why the heck can’t I play football again?”
The son says now: “It’s about not wanting to give up. So from that moment on, it has been about trying to play again.”
That is the moment that is so close for Parry, who is chasing his dream of returning to the Spartans and playing football again later this season.
He thinks of the crowd, of how it will feel to jog onto the field with his teammates, of the noise that will wash over them. Then he sees himself sprinting down the field under a kickoff, making the tackle and hopping up and rushing back to the bench.
“I feel sorry for the first guy I hit, man. Feel really sorry for him,” he often says to his roommate, punter Bryce Partridge.
“He has been talking about it since last spring,” Partridge said.
Jeb Burns, the associate trainer who has helped guide Parry’s rehabilitation, added: “You have two years of pent-up aggression stored up. It’s not like he’s going out there looking to knock someone’s head off. But he’s not going out there to just run down the field, either.”
Parry acknowledges that he occasionally thinks, “Man, what if I get leveled?” Then he chuckles softly.
“If it happens, it happens, and it won’t hurt too bad,” he says. “I’ll be too fired up.”
And now? How does he feel now, he is asked.
“Nervous. Antsy,” he says. “Sometimes it’s, `Man, am I really going to be able to do this? Am I really going to be able to hit?’ It’ll be a big accomplishment. It’s like, looking back, I thought I was never going to get out of the hospital bed. Two years ago, this day looked so far away.”
Dire situation
He was a sophomore walk-on two years ago and better known as the younger brother of star Spartans linebacker Josh Parry. But he was a willing worker who earned a spot on special teams, and that day against UTEP he tore down under a kickoff as he often had in the past.
Bodies flew as they always do on a return, and a teammate rolled into Parry’s legs, sending him to the turf with a compound fracture of his right tibia and fibula. The broken bones protruded against his sock, which quickly filled with blood, and when his brother reached him he took one look and staggered away.
His father, a nurse and football coach in Sonora, soon was by his side, as were Burns and Spartans team doctor Dan Haber.
“First time I’ve been hurt,” muttered Parry, who still felt no pain. That came later, as he rode in an ambulance to the San Jose hospital where Haber operated on him that night.
“The expectation with an injury like that is that [it’s] perfectly treatable,” Haber said, but Parry developed compartment syndrome, reducing the blood flow to his extremities. On Monday, cultures were taken and Haber cut Parry again, this time to relieve the pressure.
The cultures revealed an infection, and immediately Haber hooked Parry up to four forceful antibiotics. “Our big guns,” he called them, but still the infection spread.
“It was a freak thing,” Haber said, but the infection kept attacking, and finally Parry’s temperature spiked above 104.
“At one point I was concerned he was going to die,” Haber said.
He transferred Parry to the Stanford Medical Center, where on Wednesday it appeared the infection was under control. But the next morning it was raging again, and now it was clear Parry would lose some part of his leg.
Parry was sedated through most of this, hardly aware of the drama surrounding him, but always Haber talked to Parry’s father.
“As soon as he started spiking temperatures, I knew he was in trouble,” Nick Parry remembered. “I feared for him.”
The doctors feared they would have to amputate all of Parry’s leg, but finally the infection was contained and they knew they could cut below the knee. They gave that news to Nick Parry, who passed it on to his son.
“Probably the hardest thing I had to do in my life was tell my son he has to have his leg taken off or he might lose his life,” he said. “He was stunned.”
Neil Parry remembers the pain he felt when he got the news.
“It was extreme, the worst pain you could ever think of,” he said. “They left the release form in my room and I didn’t want to sign it. It sat in the room for a day, a day and a half. They say on the form what procedures are going to be done. It said amputation of the lower right leg. I knew when I signed my signature, my right leg was gone.”
But he did sign it, and a day later doctors amputated his right leg three inches below the knee. The following day he made his vow to return to football, and two days after that he said this to his family: “Well, you won’t have to spend as much money on socks now.”
“It has been rough,” Parry noted. “But humor helps and I don’t think other people need to be brought down. It’s my situation. What good is it going to do to make other people feel bad that I’m hurt? There’s two things you can do: make the best of it or do nothing and be bummed out all the time. That’s not a way to live. Life’s so short as it is. You’ve got to be happy and try to make the best of it.”
Sorrow, disbelief
A happy group of Spartans poured into their locker room the Saturday after Parry’s injury. They had just beaten Nevada in Reno, but Dave Baldwin, who was then their coach, interrupted their celebration.
“You could tell he was having trouble telling us something and it got real quiet,’` remembered Marcus Arroyo, the Spartans’ senior quarterback. “Then Josh got up and told us Neil was going to lose his leg.
“Instantly the tide switched from joy to complete sorrow and disbelief. When something that sudden happens in your life, it’s human nature not to believe it. There’s those seconds, but then you realize it’s really happening. Then, it was really, really tough. Guys went back to their lockers, heads down, guys crying. There wasn’t any conversation for a good 10, 20 minutes.”
Baldwin also told the Spartans that Parry intended to play again.
“At first you think, `Wow, can it really happen?'” Arroyo said. “Hearing him say that, you’re happy while debating, `Can it happen?’ Then seeing, watching, hearing him through the process has been one of the most admirable things I’ve ever seen. I have more admiration for that guy than I have for anyone. Man, watching him is something else. It’s a life-altering thing.
“You watch him go through what he’s going through, you learn not to take things for granted. To see him out there running every day, to see him working out, then to think there’s times when you want to take a play off or when you’re tired or don’t want to practice, it erases that thought completely. There’s no way you can take for granted what you have. If I ever need something to boost me up, just seeing him out there does that for me.”
Haber, the team doctor, acknowledged that “on one level, your initial gut reaction is it would be easier for everyone if Neil just said, `I’m going to give up this dangerous sport.’
“These are uncharted waters. You’re always asking yourself is there a major, incremental injury that could occur where we should step in and say, `Neil, you can’t play.’ I can’t think of any. We are pushing the envelope a little bit. . . . But I’m not going to stand in Neil’s way.”
No non-kicker has played major-college football with a prosthetic leg. That is the dream Neil Parry is pursuing, the dream he has pursued for two years.
Once, his weight was down 50 pounds, but now he weighs close to his pre-injury 190. Often he has suffered through months of inactivity. He has undergone 20 operations, tried and discarded several prosthetics, got a new coach, argued with his father, confronted skeptics and endured the insensitivities of a society that is uncomfortable with the handicapped.
“Sometimes I hesitate to put a pair of shorts on and go out,” he said. “Everybody stares.”
But Parry can handle it.
“Mom, what happened to that guy’s leg?” he remembers a child saying.
“Shh-shh,” the embarrassed mother pleaded.
“Don’t go swimming,” Parry told the child. “Bit by a shark.”
His father, in turn, has looked on not only with parental love, but with a coach’s mentality as well.
“It’s gratifying to watch him do it,” he said. “But I’m also making sure I see him with the ability to step on a Division I field. I don’t want to blow smoke up places, so when I see something I know he has to do, I tell him.”
Parry said: “He’s just being a dad, I guess. He gets on my butt, which is good. He’s making sure I’m taking care of business.”
He has done just that, and along the way Parry has transformed others and brought honor to himself. He has received awards for his courage and given inspirational talks at schools; has been recognized by professors who never taught him and feted by the San Francisco 49ers (“You’re amazing,” Jerry Rice told him at the time); he has heard Bill Clinton promise to attend his first game back. Most tellingly, he has helped heal others.
Haber spent long days after the amputation wondering if he could have done something differently and altered the outcome.
“I was grieving with Neil,” he said. “His reaction made all the difference in the world. You expect at some point a level of bitterness. But it’s always been, `Now what do we do?’ His reaction has turned this from what could have been a very negative thing to something I’m proud to be part of.”
His father, his old coach, struggled with guilt as well.
“`It’s my fault. I’m the one who taught him the game. I’m the one who put him out there.’ I went through all of that,” he said. “No doubt Neil helped me. He let everyone know, `Hey, I’m going to be OK.'”
Parry emerged from his last operation last spring and last month was fitted with a new, more stable prosthetic. This latest model energized him–his dream was closer now–but he sustained more blows.
Last month, Mutual of Omaha, the NCAA’s catastrophic insurance carrier, said it would consider Parry healed if he played and thus would cancel his coverage for medical procedures that ultimately could reach $1.5 million.
“That crushed me pretty bad,” Parry said. “I didn’t want to talk to anybody.”
That day he skipped a workout for the first time when he was physically able and simply sat in a training room, watching through a window as his teammates practiced.
“I thought I was done,” he said.
“I’ve never seen him so down,” roommate Partridge said.
Later, his competitive fires reignited, Parry’s depression turned to rage and he told his father, “I’m going to do it anyway and worry about it later.”
“I wanted to talk to the people who made the decision,” he said. “But everyone thought that was a bad idea. Then I calmed down and realized it wasn’t the best thing for myself or my family.”
But the next day Mutual reversed its position. His dream rekindled, Parry was back at practice that afternoon, “out there running like crazy,” Partridge said.
“I never figured a big company like that would change that fast,” Parry said. “So I was shocked and happy. I was like, `All right, man, it’s back on my shoulders. If I can’t do it, it’s no one else’s fault.’ I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
In recent weeks, a bout of swelling slowed Parry’s progress, pushing back his planned return to the field. This week, he was back at practice.
No stopping him
Years ago a heavy weight fell onto the shoulders of Fitz Hill, the second-year San Jose State head coach who brings his team to Illinois on Saturday. It descended the day his mother sustained an aneurysm while in church and a neurosurgeon told him he didn’t think she would live.
“That was January 9th of 1984, and she’s still living, still surviving,” Hill said. “I hear a lot of people say, `Parry can’t play again.’ But he wants to play, and I don’t think me or anybody else here on this earth should be the judge of what somebody can or cannot do.” Neil Parry now plays golf, shooting in the 80s, wake-boards and water-skis. But football is the grail, the sport he most wants to enjoy once more.
That is why each day after warming up with the Spartans, he moves off to the side to labor with Haber, the trainer. Speed and strength. He needs both before he returns to the field, and they work on his fast-twitch muscles. Sprints. Gassers. Gassers. High-knee activities. Butt-kick activities. Standing in place and pulling a knee to his chin. Parry does them all and then moves on to the weight room, where he does squats and other exercises to build up his legs.
“The main thing will be, one, is he able to maintain a high degree of speed through a 70-, 80-yard sprint?” Haber said. “And does he feel strong and stable while he’s doing it?”
When he does he will be turned over to Keith Allen, the Spartans’ special teams coordinator. There will be “avoid” drills against bags, then contact drills, then finally the chance to make a play.
“Neil, you’re going to let me know when you’re ready,” Allen once said to him.
“Coach, that’s not the way it’s going to work,” Parry replied. “I want you to let me know when I’m good enough to play.”
Allen knows that Parry wants to earn his spot. “To get him on the field could be an easy ploy,” he conceded.
“I could say, `OK, I’ll make you my safety.’ I don’t feel bad as a coach, he’s on the field, everybody’s happy. But that’s not the position he wants to be in and I’m not going to do a stunt. When he’s ready to play, he’s going to play, and he’s going to be in a position where his desire and want-to are going to show.”
That, of course, is just fine with Parry. That is just how he sees it during those sleepless nights, sprinting down the field under a kickoff, making the tackle and hopping up and rushing back to the bench.
“Sometimes, everything just goes through my mind then and I get one of those smiles,” he said. “More like a smile of, `How the hell did this happen? What the hell?’
“Seeing everybody out there tackling all the time and not being able to do it, I can guarantee you, the first guy I hit, I think he’ll be a little shocked at what I bring. I can’t wait. Even if I don’t make the tackle, just to be out there will be the best feeling ever.”
