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Jerome Harrison and family are thankful today after brain surgery last year.
Thirteen months ago, the Lions ended their association with running back
Jerome Harrison and traded him to the Eagles for Ronnie Brown. At the time, with two journeyman
running backs switching teams, the impact each could have made on his new club probably
would have been minimal.
The impact on Harrison's existence, though, was life-altering. That's
because, during his physical, Philadelphia trainers discovered a brain
tumor, and it's safe to say that, unless he had been traded, nobody would
have known about it.
On Thursday, The NFL Today on CBS produced a fantastic Thanksgiving piece
on Harrison and his wife, Michelle, and how his family is dealing with
life today after that harrowing experience.
“It was a basic physical,” Harrison said. “They tell you to cough, turn your
head, touch your toes, all that good stuff. The [doctor] looked at my eyes.
He said, ‘Whoa.' He showed me the papers, and he said, ‘You see the white
thing?' ‘Yeah.' ‘That's not supposed to be there.' ... He was amazed I was
still walking and talking.”
Harrison underwent emergency surgery and, in the aftermath of the
brain-tumor news and the surgery, reports surfaced that the surgery had gone
well and that doctors had removed the entire tumor.
But in reality, those were scary moments. Harrison was originally supposed
to undergo a three-hour operation. But after the fourth hour, the surgeon
told Michelle -- who was pregnant with their second child -- and the other
family members who waited at the hospital that there were complications.
the surgery would continue for several more hours.
“We were shocked,” Michelle said. “We expected it to be something that was
pretty easy and that shouldn't have many complications. The tumor was not
huge. It was the placement of the tumor -- it being right on his brain stem,
and it was engulfed in veins."
Twelve hours later, the surgeon reappeared and said Harrison's outcome was
unclear. The next day, Harrison suffered a blood clot in his brain and had a
stroke. The family worried that he might never wake up. And if he did, his
capacity for a normal life might be severely diminished. Thanksgiving 2011
was not a happy time for the Harrison family.