Jan 27, 2010
Wake Forest-Rolesville running back Andy Fairchild poses with athletic trainer Rick Baker nearly five months after he broke his neck in a junior varsity football game (Photo by: Teri Saylor, VYPE High School Sports Magazine)
When football players suit up for games, they know there is an inherent risk of injury. Most football injuries aren't life threatening, but as the state of North Carolina has learned in recent years, sometimes the worst case scenario comes true.
Wake Forest-Rolesville junior varsity running back Andy Fairchild has firsthand knowledge of the risk for serious injury.
On Sept. 10, 2009, Andy, 15, was playing in a junior varsity game against Clayton. The next night, he was supposed to move up to the varsity team, where a series of injuries had created a need for a replacement running back.
The Cougars had the ball as the end of the first half neared. On the final play of the half, Andy took the hand-off and went through the line. He saw a linebacker coming for him, and put his head down and took a helmet-to-helmet hit.
"I went down and there was some really intense pain through my left shoulder for about 30 seconds," he said. "But by the time [athletic trainer Rick Baker] got there, the pain was pretty much gone."
Andy described feeling like someone was twisting a knife in his shoulder.
"Coach Baker tried to call an ambulance but I told him not to," said Andy.
He stayed on the field for several minutes before he was helped up and walked to where his team was for halftime.
Andy wanted to go back in the game. The sports medicine staff told him if he felt better by the end of the third quarter he could.
That didn’t happen.
As the temperature dropped, the ice on Andy's shoulder began to stiffen his muscles, and his range of motion was limited. With the help of the sports medicine staff, he decided to stay out for the rest of the night and begin preparing for the varsity game the next day.
"They were doing a good job of checking him over," said Jackie Fairchild, Andy's mother. "They wanted to make sure everything was intact and normal."
No one – not Andy, his parents, his teammates, or anyone else on the sideline – had an idea that his injury was a serious, and potentially life-threatening, one.
"His dad and I thought it was a concussion more than anything. His pain was in his upper back and shoulder area. It wasn't in his neck at all," Jackie Fairchild said.
Baker urged the Fairchilds to take Andy to the hospital to be checked out, but they decided to wait.
"We went out to eat that night and Andy could not sit comfortably," his mother said. "He wasn't eating, so I brought him home. At that point I was thinking whiplash."
Andy slept on the couch near his parents’ room that night.
"He woke up the next morning and couldn't move," said Jackie Fairchild. "He couldn't move. He couldn't even pick up his backpack."
Jackie Fairchild called Wake Forest-Rolesville head coach Reggie Lucas that morning to tell him Andy wasn't any better and that he wouldn't be able to play that night. Baker called the family back and told them that Andy needed to get an X-ray that day.
Andy went to an orthopedic doctor whom he had seen for an injury the year before.
"I drove him there in my own car. He wasn't immobilized or anything," Andy's mother said. "In our heads, we still didn't think it was anything that serious."
After Andy had the X-ray, the doctor came back to the family to deliver some news.
"He told us he couldn't get a good picture with a normal X-ray, but he said there was something wrong with one of my vertebrae," Andy said.
The doctor sent Andy to get a CT scan. After a few hours, the doctor called the parents back to Andy's room.
"We walked in there and he was strapped down. He was completely immobilized," Andy's father, Mark Fairchild, said.
Andy was diagnosed with an unstable fracture of the C-6 vertebrae. He had also destroyed a disc between two of the vertebrae in his neck and several other vertebrae were out of alignment.
"The doctor told us that it was a very serious injury and that Andy was lucky at that point that he was not paralyzed," his mom said.
"I was thankful that nothing bad had happened, but I was shaking," Andy said. "I was nervous about what was going to happen. I didn't think I had realized what exactly had happened to me yet."
The diagnosis came quickly, and it wasn't what the family was expecting to hear from the doctors.
The family spoke to the neurosurgeon at WakeMed where they were told surgery was the only option.
"It was very shocking. Dad held it together, but I didn't do as well," Jackie Fairchild said. "It went from thinking it was muscular to something that could change him for life."
Jackie said the "what if's" ran through her mind for a while. "God forbid had he gone back in to play," she said.
Andy was transported by ambulance to WakeMed, where he had surgery the next morning.
The surgery required a six-inch incision in the front of his neck to place a metal plate against the damaged vertebrae.
Andy said he only had one question for the doctor, "Will I ever play football again?"
"The doctor said, 'Absolutely not, you'll never take a hit like that again,'" Andy said. "I lost it then because I just love the game."
The surgery was a success, and there were no complications.
Andy went home from the hospital the day after the surgery. He had to wear a collar for three months to keep his neck stabilized, and he wasn't allowed to lift more than five pounds. He returned to school the following week.
Both parents said they didn't fully understand how serious the injury was, even after the diagnosis.
"We knew Erik Cole broke his neck and he's back playing hockey again, so what did that really mean?" Jackie said.
When Andy went back to the doctor for a follow-up visit, it set in for the family just how serious Andy's injury was.
"A surgeon came up to me and said, 'I want to shake your hand,'" Andy said.
Andy was a little confused as to why a doctor wanted to shake his hand.
The doctor told the family that it was amazing Andy was still walking because 95-percent of people with the same injury never walk again.
Family credits athletic trainer
Rick Baker, the athletic trainer at Wake Forest-Rolesville, was first on the field when Andy was injured, and the Fairchild family is very grateful for his efforts.
"I cannot say enough good about Coach Baker because, in all honesty, if he had not come to [us] on Thursday night after the game, I don't know if we would have done anything until Monday," Andy’s mother said.
"He did everything he was supposed to do on the sideline," she added. "Thank God Coach Baker was there."
The family said Baker went above and beyond what his job asks of him.
As Andy rode in the ambulance to WakeMed, Baker called the family to check on him. After Andy came out of surgery, Baker and his wife were there to see him.
"[Baker] felt he hadn't done enough, he felt he had let Andy down over the fact that he didn't get Andy in an ambulance that night," said Jackie. "But he doesn't have a CT machine on the sideline. He did his job, and he was awesome."
Jackie Fairchild worries for children at schools that don't have athletic trainers.
"The kids at schools that don’t have trainers like that, they’re at a disadvantage," she said.
Staying in the game
Andy has played football since he was five years old, and he doesn't want to leave the game.
Doctors have made it clear that Andy should never play the game again, but the coaching staff at Wake Forest-Rolesville told Andy he can still be involved.
"They said you don't have to play to stay in football, there's always coaching," Andy said.
The coaches put Andy on their staff at the end of the 2009 season. Sitting atop the press box, Andy was in charge of keeping stats and tracking plays.
"We don't know what capacity they'll use him in next year, but Andy not only loves the game, but he supports his teammates," Jack said.
Andy added that he is looking at picking up some other non-contact sports - in particular, golf.
"I hope to make the school golf team this spring," he said.
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