EL DORADO
The road back to being the Caydrick Bloomquist that Emporia High basketball fans remember has hundreds of miles and around a couple dozen pounds left on it.
There are still drainage tubes running out of Bloomquist’s abdomen that need to come out, another surgery in his future, the removal of other equipment and the reintroduction of lost energy and strength that most 19-year-old athletes possess practically by default. But the road Bloomquist faces ahead of him isn’t nearly as daunting as what’s now behind him.
He sits in the living room of his mother’s house and speaks at length about what he’s been through — and is still going through — and occasionally the equipment running out of his body percolates in the room’s calm, afternoon-lit silence. He describes each piece attached to him and matter-of-factly recalls medical details so specific and exhaustive for a layman, you’re almost left to wonder if he performed those four surgeries on himself.
“It was more of a physical battle, really, in the hospital, and that’s why I lost a lot of weight,” he says. “But it was mental, too — I can’t stress that enough. Man...” Reflectively, he trails off.
After just under three months of almost-continuous hospitalization stemming from his most serious battle yet with the gastrointestinal ailment Crohn’s disease, Bloomquist is indeed noticeably thinner than the already-skinny guard who shot his way to Emporia High’s all-time records for 3-point field goals made in a season and a career. Looking to put back on around 20 more pounds — he lost up to around 40 during his hospitalization — he’s now eating a heaping helping of whatever he wants, shooting for 4,000 calories a day. Energy-wise, he’s gradually getting his legs back with workouts more commonly associated with people more than three times his age.
“I’ve been exercising a lot more — and when I say exercising, I mean walking,” he said. “I almost walked a full block the other day, and that was a lot. It was a big block, and I felt like I just ran two miles.”
If you have to endure what Bloomquist did between Feb. 6 and April 25, it’d be ideal to do it as a teenage athlete. Not only is Bloomquist still alive, but there’s a return to competitive basketball waiting at the end of his road. That’s still two seasons away, but he’s determined to get there, and the coaching staff at Butler County Community College is willing to wait.
“I look at it like... I’ll be healthier, and I’ll eventually be stronger than what I was,” he said. “And that’s how I look at it. It’s gonna be a long road. But someone told me, ‘You’ll look back at this... it’ll be a small part of your life, (because) you have the rest of your life ahead of you.’”
Nothing routine
It started with a procedure that sounds relatively routine: an appendectomy. After a trip to the emergency room in El Dorado, Bloomquist had his appendix removed at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in the wee hours of Feb. 6. But Dr. Jason Knudtson, one of the physicians who would later treat Bloomquist at Kansas Medical Center in Andover, says there’s no such thing as a routine appendectomy in a Crohn’s disease patient. Bloomquist quickly became an example of why.
After his sophomore year at EHS, Bloomquist was diagnosed with Crohn’s, which causes inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract and weakens the intestinal tissue. It commonly causes intestinal blockage and can include, among other symptoms, digestive problems, abdominal pain and anemia. Crohn’s flareups during his time at EHS would give him severe cramps and nausea and knock him out of school and practice.
“And the cramps would cause a lot of pain and a lot of energy loss,” he said. “And then, like I say, you wouldn’t want to eat or drink anything, just because you didn’t want to be in pain. And you’re so nauseated anyway that anything you put in you, you’re sick. ... But going through high school with it, I watched it real well, and I didn’t really have a whole lot of problems.”
When Bloomquist was having his appendix removed that night in February, inflammation was discovered in his intestine. He stayed at Wesley for five days, then went home with his mother, Becky Shum, to her house in El Dorado. The doctor at Wesley hoped that with medication and careful attention to diet, the inflammation would go down, and surgery to remove the inflamed part of the intestine wouldn’t be necessary.
But Bloomquist returned to Wesley a few days later because of an abscess outside his abdominal cavity and ended up staying 10 more days, during which time the abscess was drained.
Then came another release from the hospital — followed the next day by another trip to the emergency room. Bloomquist spiked a severe fever during the following week, and on March 6, one month after his appendectomy, he went to Andover. He’d stay at Kansas Medical Center for the next seven weeks.
On March 13, he underwent an intestinal resection, during which 17 inches of intestines were removed.
The worst
After that second surgery, Bloomquist was feeling better. He had some swelling in his lower body, but that’s not uncommon, and he had begun getting up and walking.
Trouble was, the swelling didn’t begin to go down. It got worse, and Bloomquist’s legs felt like Jell-O when he walked.
“It was seriously, from my waist down, it just puffed up,” Bloomquist said. “I actually gained a lot of weight. I actually got up to like 150 because I was swollen.”
The swelling had spread up to his right arm by the time he went in for a CT scan on March 18. The scan revealed what had happened: because of the weakened intestines, the connection between Bloomquist’s colon and small intestine had broken. Waste material was filling Bloomquist’s abdominal cavity, and it was severe enough that by the time he got out of the CT scan, his face and other arm had also started swelling.
“He was just septic,” Shum said. “I mean, he turned just awful.”
His life depended on going under the knife again for surgery No. 3.
“He had part of his intestines removed, and then the connection is always the concern in that surgery, no matter who you’re doing it on, and sometimes it doesn’t heal right,” said Knudtson, who performed that third surgery. “And that is what happened with him, and they get sick. Frankly, it’s a rare complication, but unfortunately, it happens from time to time. You just have to wash everything out and patch him up as best you can.”
Bloomquist was rushed into surgery, where the connection was repaired and his system was flushed out. He spent three days in intensive care, and his improvement was dramatic.
“I got to a point where all the swelling went away, everything was looking just great,” he said. “I was actually on the road to recovery, and everything was awesome, and I was gonna get out in a couple weeks, three weeks maybe.”
Then, on March 26, without any physical symptoms that Bloomquist could recognize, it was discovered that his wound had split open. He was in the operating room again within the hour, the wound was repaired and drainage tubes were installed.
“I was at a point, my body couldn’t handle more surgery,” he said. “It was weak enough already. And I didn’t think that this surgery would be as tough on my body. I didn’t think so, but I found out later how bad it hurt.”
‘Prison’
Although the third surgery was the most critical one, that fourth and final surgery was the one that left Bloomquist at his weakest. Even the simple act of talking, taking the smallest breath, was a physically painful chore. In his words, he felt like nothing.
“I remember the first time I got out of bed, they tried to stand me up,” he said. “And I couldn’t do it. ... I could only sit for like 10 minutes, and I had to get back in bed. I was that weak, and (it was) that painful for me to do it.”
He makes no bones about his feelings toward visitors right after that final surgery — he didn’t want them, and it showed.
“I remember there was one day, I had probably like 12 people in my room, just family members, and they all happened to show up at the same time,” Bloomquist said. “... But it was funny because, I remember I’d have the nurses kick ’em out, because I was trying to sleep. And that was one of the times I just really wanted to rest.”
“He wasn’t a very good host,” Shum said.
“There was a lot of times I wasn’t nice at all,” Bloomquist said. “I admit it, I was rude, but I couldn’t help it. And there were times I’d yell at ’em to leave or something. But they understood that I was in a lot of pain, and my mind was in a thousand different places at once, and I just didn’t really know what I was saying a lot of times, too. But there were days I was happy.”
Friends, family and teammates all came around during segments of his hospitalization, and family members stayed with him overnight. Sometimes, Shum would leave the hospital room and cry. Bloomquist’s father, Emporia High coach Rick Bloomquist, drove down when his schedule permitted and spent some nights at KMC.
“There were days it was the longest drive I could ever imagine, and there were days I couldn’t believe it was so short,” Rick Bloomquist said. “Because my mind was going 90 million miles an hour, and the next thing I’d know, I’d leave, and I’d be in Emporia, or I’d leave Emporia and be at the hospital. ...
“I had about three emotional drives that I didn’t want to wish on anybody, and that was the hardest part, the drive. Obviously, seeing your son in the situation, as helpless as he is, and not being able to do anything is really hard. But to think about it probably was the worst part for me.”
Sleeping was beyond difficult for Caydrick Bloomquist. He did what he could to entertain himself in the state of confined frustration that can drive any longterm hospital patient mad. He remembers once watching the clock in his room, counting it for 30 minutes, because he had nothing else to do.
“I pretty much became a fan of all the reality TV shows on VH1 and MTV,” he said. “I watched all of ’em through, beginning to end.”
Pain medication helped get him through, too — and weaning him off the high-powered meds was one of the last things that needed to be done before he could finally go home on April 25.
“And I had my withdrawal from it,” he said. “But they took me off it slowly. Because I was on some pretty good stuff.”
“He was an addict, truly an addict, during that time,” Shum said. “Because the last 10 days, they were detoxing him.”
“I had the pain medicine that I could take every hour, and for the detox, what they did, every day they lowered it by 0.2 milligrams,” Bloomquist said. “And that doesn’t seem like a lot, but I definitely noticed it.”
Not surprisingly, he’s sleeping much better now that he’s recovering at his mom’s home in El Dorado. Even still attached to the drainage tubes, a wound VAC, an ostomy bag and other medical hardware, he feels as if he’s been sprung.
“It was kind of like — I don’t know, kind of like prison...” he said. “But it really wasn’t — like a prison in your mind, really.”
The future
Dr. Knudtson said Bloomquist would come back to see him at least once a week “until I feel like he’s ready to kind of fly on his own,” and he had the possibility of getting his drainage tubes taken out as soon as this week. Some months from now, he’ll have another surgery to repair his intestines.
Bloomquist began his college basketball career at Hutchinson Community College last fall, but played in just eight games and scored eight points before deciding to transfer to Butler County, where he was supposed to take the floor next year. Now, he’s taking a medical redshirt and won’t be ready to suit up as a Grizzly until the 2010-11 season, when he’ll be a 21-year-old sophomore with one year of juco eligibility.
That didn’t deter Butler coach Mike Bargen in the least. Bargen was unfamiliar with Crohn’s, but since Bloomquist first fell ill in February, the Bloomquist family worked to educate him on the disease: what it does to the body and how it can be controlled with medication and diet, but that sometimes Crohn’s flareups can cause serious problems.
Bargen visited Bloomquist in the hospital after his first surgery and saw firsthand what the ordeal and the heavy meds had wrought: medicated lethargy and frustration. During a later visit, he saw the more upbeat Bloomquist, the one who was looking forward to finally getting out of prison.
On April 21, four days before Bloomquist’s release, Bargen officially signed him to a letter of intent in his hospital room.
“That guy has been so good to me right now, and I would follow him anywhere,” Bloomquist said. “And he’s a great coach. He’s done so much for me — he signed me in a hospital, and I was in a hospital bed. And as weak as I was, and as frail as I was, tubes coming out of me, it was just kind of a special moment.”
“We look forward to getting him back as soon as possible,” Bargen said, “but we want to make sure that this gets corrected in the right way, and not to rush to get back and continue to have to battle it more and more in the future.
“So our expectation was, we want to make sure that you’re doing all right, and that when you have the opportunity to get back, you’ll always have a roster spot here and that you’re a welcome part of our team and our family.”
With that kind of patience, Bloomquist has all the time he needs to regain his weight — he had dropped all the way to 122 pounds — as well as get his strength back. Provided that the next surgery is successful, Knudtson said he doesn’t see any reason why Bloomquist couldn’t work himself into shape to return to basketball.
So, even if his life is changed forever, he could be the same Bloomquist again on the court. Unless he becomes even better.
“My admiration for him has just gone up another notch with the way he’s handled this now,” Rick Bloomquist said. “He’s never going to give up his dreams and his goals, but obviously, it’s been a tough road. ...
“I’m really proud of the way he’s handled it. He’s a tough kid, there’s no question about it.”
MikeDoyle (anonymous) says...
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May 6, 2009 at 4:07 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )