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West Liberty Welcomes Special Guest Saturday

Bradley Metts defying all odds

Photo Provided Bradley Metts, left, and his father, Dan Metts.

WEST LIBERTY — The West Liberty football team is set to face No. 3-ranked and undefeated Shepherd on Saturday at West Family Stadium. When the Hilltoppers captains meet those of the Rams at midfield prior to kickoff, there will be a special guest decked out in the home team’s black and gold.

And really, that will be a miracle. Perhaps more appropriately, 12-year-old Albany, Ohio, resident Bradley Metts is a miracle.

“It’s a heartbreaking story but the family has stayed positive through it all,” West Liberty defensive line/associated head coach Brad Forshey said. “It’s also an inspirational and teachable moment.”

The story begins just after Metts’ ninth birthday while the family was attending an Ohio University football game. A member of an undefeated soccer team for three years in a row, Bradley began complaining about an earache and a couple of days later went to see a doctor who couldn’t find anything wrong.

“As the week went on it turned from an earache to a headache,” Dan Metts, Bradley’s father recalled. “He went through basketball tryouts and made the team, but could barely run and never got to go through the first practice.”

“The start of the next week it was still getting worse, so we took him back to the doc.”

This time blood tests were run. The thought was that Bradley was suffering from mononucleosis and he was sent home. But those tests were negative and the family was sent home again while the medical staff waited on the results of a couple more.

“That night Bradley woke up screaming at midnight — on for 15 seconds, off for 10. Like a pulsing in his head,” Dan Metts said. “He screamed that way all the way to Columbus Children’s Hospital.”

“We got there at 2:30 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. By 9 that morning we were in an MRI after a CT (CAT scan) and X-rays.”

It turns out that the infection had gone from Bradley’s ear to around the cerebellum, which is the part of the brain at the back of the skull in vertebrates. Its function is to coordinate and regulate muscular activity. The infection had made puss pockets.

“So they had to go in because once it forms pockets antibiotics won’t touch it,” Dan Metts said. “By 1 in the afternoon he was in surgery (and) by 2:45 they were done.”

“They kept him sedated all that day and that night.”

Physicians woke Bradley around 6 the next morning and much to everyone’s delight, he was fine. They kept him awake for 10 minutes.

“By 8 they woke him back up and he was completely different,” Dan said. He was “kicking, swinging his arms and wouldn’t do anything anyone would say so they put him back to sleep.”

“By 11, in the MRI, he crashed.”

The swelling and pressure, Dan said, had become so great that the cerebellum pinched the lower brainstem and cut the blood flow.

“He laid lifeless with 20-something machines hooked up to him to keep him alive,” Bradley’s father said. “After two weeks of that he had a heart attack just from his heart not hearing from his brain.”

“The day after we had a care conference. They were telling us to pull the plug … he would never move again and just pretty much be a vegetable.”

After going through the normal, obvious reactionary phase — yelling and cursing — Dan sat down to have the hardest conversation of his life, with his son.

“I was giving him the whole talk of if he was done, be done,” Dan recalled. “Don’t fight for me or his mom, but for himself.”

“And if he was too tired, to give up. That he had already made me the proudest daddy in the world.”

Then the miracle happened.

“Of course he is still lying there lifeless through the talk, but I noticed him move his foot,” Dan said. “Then I told him ‘I saw that. Do it again.’ He moved it 50 times on command.”

“I had to video it because there was no one in there with me and we had just got done being told he would never move again.”

Bradley Metts, who now uses a wheelchair, died three different times during a five-month hospital stay. But today, more and more is coming back.

“He’s 100 percent upstairs,” Dan said of Bradley’s mental capacity. “We stand some and do his bike and work on stuff. He’s still on the ventilator but he is working on that too, breathing over the vent a lot now.”

“But I take him to school now once a week and he’s in general classes.”

“He is still an ornery 12-year-old who communicates with a letter board and blinks one time for ‘yes’ and two times for ‘no.'”

“I just want as many people as possible to know his story, because it creates awareness for children and rehab therapy.”

Forshey, who played with Dan Metts at Marietta College, is happy to spread the word.

“We’re really looking forward to having Bradley and his family up here for the game on Saturday and we’re thrilled and honored to have him serve as our honorary captain,” Forshey said.

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