Lavery working to overcome health woes
No one realizes the limits of human physical performance better than an athlete past his playing days.
For 1996 Naperville Central graduate Tim Lavery, however, this is beyond ridiculous.
The Naperville resident has fallen victim to a frustrating downward spiral of health events - "a lengthy pathology," as he put it - that has him unable to work and often homebound.
Lavery is one of the top athletes DuPage County has produced. A 2015 inductee into Naperville Central's Athletic Hall of Fame, he was the state's Gatorade football player of the year and an all-state pitcher and right fielder his senior year, 1995-96.
Drafted by the Cubs that spring, Lavery instead attempted the rare feat of being a two-sport Division I athlete. As a freshman he started five games at quarterback for Illinois then headed over to baseball.
Seeing the writing on the wall, though, he left football to concentrate on baseball. In 1998 he helped the Illini win the Big Ten title and was drafted again by the Cubs in 1999. Lavery spent four seasons in the minors with the Chicago and Pittsburgh organizations before retiring.
He returned to the University of Illinois to finish a sports management degree and, in 2005, started his career with DePuy Spine in Chicago. He's now employed by Zimmer Biomet Spine.
Lavery described his job as part of a "complex spine team" for pediatric and adolescent scoliosis cases. That involves moving up to 30 trays each containing about 25 pounds of medical equipment into hospital operating rooms, then consulting with doctors on the proper equipment to use during surgeries he said last six to 10 hours.
Due to the physical demands of the job and the culmination of four years of health problems, Lavery has been unable to work since November.
In the spring of 2012, Lavery started needing to visit the bathroom up to 17 times daily, he said. Like many people he soldiered on until one day on the golf course his father, Kevin, noticed the same thing and commented on it.
Finally acting, tests found a cancerous tumor pressing against Lavery's prostate gland. Through six radiation treatments that tumor was eradicated, and this June 26 will be his fourth anniversary being cancer-free.
While in remission Lavery served as a volunteer quarterbacks coach with the Redhawks, bonding with Jake Kolbe and others on Naperville Central's Class 8A championship team.
"I always said I needed those kids more than they needed me," Lavery said.
If only that were the end of it.
"There's really two layers to the story," he said last week after visiting his parents, Kevin and Kathy, at their winter place in Naples, Florida.
"It's what's going on with the post cancer and the fallout of that, plus my sports history," Tim said. "I've had three arm surgeries, my knees have been drained, I have no feeling in my left inner knee. I've got a lot of mileage on my body and now this. I'm 37, I feel like I'm 77."
He left out the three documented concussions, two while playing quarterback in college and another taking a line drive off his head in the minors. The baseball reached the left fielder on one hop, Lavery said.
As for "now this," we'll get to that.
Following the cancer episode, Lavery had his first seizure. (Always the athlete, he cited the first incidence the day after Alabama beat Notre Dame for the 2013 college football national championship.) Also visiting Naples at the time, upon returning he went directly from Midway International Airport to Rush University Medical Center.
He was administered the anti-seizure medication Dilantin - though he wasn't told he needed to have his blood screened every two weeks, and eventually suffered from Dilantin poisoning.
The seizures continued to the point where Lavery spent three separate five-day stints in a Northwestern Memorial Hospital epilepsy monitoring unit. One of them nearly sabotaged Lavery's 2014 wedding trip to Ireland with his wife, Kirsten; another stay ended on the day of his January 2015 induction into the Naperville Central Athletic Hall of Fame.
"That was when I felt everybody had figured out what was going on," Lavery said.
Everyone but the doctors.
"Kind of spinning our tires" for a year toward a reason for the seizures, he said, perplexed Northwestern specialists advised Lavery to go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. They found the problem - central sleep apnea, which the Clinic notes occurs when the brain doesn't send proper signals to muscles that control breathing.
Lavery said he was taking three to four breaths a minute. He now sleeps with a continuous positive airway pressure mask, which he will need the rest of his life.
"Since I got on the machine I've never felt better, never slept better," he said.
Yet as the seizures subsided another malady emerged. Doctors told Lavery that the apnea would move from the brain to his joints. Sure enough, he has rheumatoid arthritis in mainly his hands and ankles but also knees and feet. Despite wearing a patch that shoots painkillers into his body hourly, sometimes it's bad enough that he can't walk to get the mail.
Doctors also said the arthritis may have been linked to two cases of shingles Lavery had at ages 26 and 29, when his parents were in the hospital treating their own health issues. Lavery believes stress may also have caused the cancerous tumor.
"My immune system was compromised early at a young age, and that was their huge red flag," he said.
Now under the care of a Naperville rheumatologist, four drugs have been administered to remedy the arthritis pain and bulk up his autoimmune system, none successfully. A fifth drug for severe arthritis patients will be attempted on April 9, which Lavery called "kind of like Christmas Day to me."
Meanwhile he deals with anger, impatience and boredom on his bad days and his lack of control at the overall situation.
He's tried to fend that off with adult coloring books, cooking, piano, fixing up the house and golf when he can, but most successfully by a golden retriever pup known both as Cliff and "Tim's therapy dog." Former coaches and teammates call to check in.
Lavery intends to return to work, hopes to return to coaching football with Naperville Central. He believes he sees a light at the end of this tunnel while taking life's enjoyment "month to month."
"I can't sugar-coat it, it has not been fun to say the least," Lavery said.
"What I really want to say is, life isn't really going that well right now for me. But thank God I do have a lot of friends and I do get a lot of phone calls ... The last two, three years things haven't gone my way. But prior to that I lived a great life and I still do to this day. I've got a lot of people who care for me."
National honor
Even before former St. Francis girls volleyball coach won her record fourth straight state championship last fall, Illinois High School Association assistant executive director Matt Troha had said there was a chance she may garner a huge award.
It came through on Tuesday when the National Federation of State High School Associations selected the retired coach as a member of its 2016 NFHS National High School Hall of Fame inductee class.
Kopec, who announced her retirement immediately after the Spartans defeated Cary-Grove in two sets for the Class 4A title, joins 26 other IHSA representatives with that honor including York cross country coach Joe Newton. She'll be enshrined July 2 in Reno, Nevada.
In 42 seasons all at St. Francis, Kopec won 12 state titles and earned seven other state trophies. Her teams won 25 sectional titles, 31 regionals and went 43-9 in state finals competition.
Kopec's 1,248 victories are the most in any sport in Illinois prep history and rank fifth all-time nationally in prep volleyball, according to NFHS records.
The NFHS honor is on top of others including membership in the Illinois Coaches Association Hall of Fame, honors as NFHS and National High School Coaches Association coach of the year and selection To the Chicago Sky's Title IX Team in 2012.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com
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