foreign
Braden he's 17 from London high school he is a junior and he plays football he loves the
program here at London High School his coaches like family to him and so are his brothers
Gavin is a tough young man he works extremely hard he does whatever you ask him to do he's a great
addition to our family and he's an individual that makes us better so in early January he called me
and said his throat hurt and I immediately thought covid Thursday we took him to be tested and it was
positive I started getting ill I started getting a fever started becoming weaker and it got so
bad that I couldn't even walk to the emergency room I became so weak Friday is fever spiked up
to 105 so we went to Nationwide Children's Hospital his heart rate was extremely high
and his blood pressure was extremely low they thought he was septic he was admitted and put
on the Infectious Disease floor we were there for two hours and it was moved to ICU for his heart
the next morning he started to have a trouble breathing and he was put on high flow oxygen
10 minutes later BiPAP and then 10 minutes later he was put on a ventilator on full life support
I could tell there was a downward Trend going on with Gavin and it wasn't good I remember getting a
text message saying it was it was getting serious and I text Gavin a quote from Marcus Luttrell from
Lone Survivor say you're never out of the fight they told me there was a chance that he wasn't
going to make it they were the sickest at that time that they had seen within two days of him
being on the ventilators when they determined he had misc multi-system inflammatory syndrome
and all of his organs were inflamed and starting to shut down I remember thinking
uh I was on a telephone call with a friend of mine from college I hadn't talked to in a
long time I said I got to get off the phone I think one of my players might pass away
all we could do was sit there and watch him be treated with two nurses 24 hours a day for nine
days straight struggle for me is when we would come into the weight room and Gavin wasn't there
and it would hit you emotionally or hit you a certain type of way but there was
an emptiness because he wasn't at his rack so around that time I started Gavin's fight
a Facebook page just to try and keep everybody informed because the basically the entire city
of London was rallying behind him when I woke up she told me about the Facebook page
we made that's when I felt how tragic it was but then I got my get well letters and
she posted some pictures of people outside my ICU room holding signs and pictures of me and
I was just in disbelief Erica the athletic trainer here for London high school during
his illness she stayed in constant contact with us when he came back to the weight room
she made sure that he didn't break the rules and try and lift she's kept him in line for
me like a mom here and then she's made sure that he made it back to the football field
I wanted to go through a multi of different testing and imaging and making sure that he
was ready to progress out of the hospital and back into physical therapy and hopefully back
on the field at that point it was good to have him back but right away he had his mind made up
they said that he might never play football again and he wasn't going to accept that
when we got to Nationwide Children's Hospital we were there for 17 days and then we went back
three times a week we went back for physical therapy for three months we also went back for
multiple testing and they called and checked on them every week I felt like they truly cared for
Gavin like he was family a lot of times when you go to facilities you don't feel that way it's just
another patient but they they were taking such great care of them he had such an incredible
recovery and he did get to play go out on that first Friday night and play and I will say I
did get a little emotional and everyone I think in the stands did this whole town rallied around them
it was a huge learning experience for all of us and it was you know he was a kid teaching adult
lessons right on life and how to how to handle it how to overcome and how to persevere what
I'm proud about a Gavin is that he just never gave up he just continued to fight through the
entire thing and he prevailed he came back he got through through everything and ended up back on
the field and was able to play a sport that he loves and does it well after realizing what I've
been through going out down the field was it was like a dream knowing that sometimes when all went
South and times went hard don't be afraid to take a step back and just be grateful for what you have