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Father's heart condition weighs on 'Canes' football player

Written: Oct 29, 2010
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By JOE SIMON

j_simon@ncnewsonline.com

Corey Eggleston Jr. hasn’t run away from much this season.

But this time, he hid behind the curtain.

The New Castle defensive back has taken on some of the Parkway Conference’s best receivers. He went head-to-head with one of the top high school running backs in the country. Those are situations the junior said he relishes. His speed, vertical leap and instincts prepare him for those matchups.

Yet those skills couldn’t do anything to prepare Eggleston for his most recent battle.

Corey’s father has undergone five different heart surgeries at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh over the past 2 1/2 weeks. Every time Corey Sr. went under, the possibility of him not waking up crept into his son’s head. His mindset didn’t improve any when Corey Sr. awoke from one of his surgeries and came back into his hospital room. Corey Jr. wasn’t ready for what he was about to encounter.

“He ran behind the curtain,” Corey Sr. said. “He didn’t want to even look at me at first. He didn’t want to see me with all the tubes coming out of me.”

The sight was too horrific, Corey Jr. said. This was his father, an indestructible force and a football legend at New Castle, who set records both on offense and defense during the 1980s. When he graduated in 1988, Cory Sr. was the Red Hurricane’s all-time leader in yards per carry (7.9), sacks (18) and second in single-season rushing yardage (1,357), all of which occurred during an amazing senior year.

So, to see him lying motionless and unconscious on a hospital bed with tubes running in and out of his body was too much for the younger Eggleston to endure.

“I couldn’t sit there and see him like that,” Corey Jr. said. “He had a tube going down his throat, they had to split his chest wide open and he had a whole bunch of IVs going through him. He’s the only person I look up to, so when I see the person I look up to sitting there and he can’t talk to me or anything, I didn’t like it.”

Neither did Corey Sr.

‘REALLY SCARED’

The elder Eggleston has called the last few weeks “the roughest time of my life.” It all started when he was sitting on his porch about three weeks ago, hanging out with a few friends, when he suddenly collapsed. Eggleston said he felt the episode coming. His heart rate increased, he started to become lightheaded and then it hit him.

“I felt myself getting real dizzy,” he said. “I tried to fight it off because I had these symptoms before and I could fight it off and it would go away. This time I went to stand up and I just blacked out. I hit my head and my face off the wall. Luckily, I was there with my friends and they called the ambulance.”

Eggleston, 40, discovered he had an irregular beat caused by a leaking valve near his heart. Surgery was scheduled almost immediately, and while the doctors assured the Egglestons the procedure was one they’ve successfully performed numerous times, the chance for a complication always exists. Corey Sr., who also has been enduring dialysis due to kidney failure, said he’s never felt so afraid and helpless.

“I’ve been on dialysis for seven years, but I still haven’t gone through what I went through down here the last two-and-a-half weeks,” he said. “I was really scared.”

Corey Jr. said he feared the worst when he was first told his father was undergoing open-heart surgery. He said he spoke to the doctors and they informed him that Corey Sr.’s chances of making it through alive were good, but the simple fact that his dad’s life was on the line was a paralyzing feeling. He tried his best not to think about what life without his father would be like, but it was nearly impossible to block out those thoughts.

However, there was something that helped him forget: football.

“That’s why I come (to practice) every day,” said Corey, who is one of New Castle’s best cornerbacks and a starting wide receiver.

“I’m usually gone every Thursday to see him. But football helps me a lot to just stop thinking about it for a minute and just have fun.

“And he’s the one who encourages me to come to football. He tells me, ‘Don’t come down here unless you don’t have football practice.’ He wants me to stay here and have fun and not worry about it as much.”

COACH’S CONNECTION

In 2007, coach Frank Bongivengo Jr. was in a similar postion with an ailing parent and football helped him through it. He remembers contemplating what to do, and then making a choice he knows was the right one.

“We did that a few years ago with my mother, when she got sick suddenly and we didn’t know what was going on,” Bongivengo said.

Donna Bongivengo, 69, died in the midst of the 2007 season from a rare neurological condition linked to cancer-related Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

“I know one place she would want me to be is here instead of there. So, I think it’s similar with (Corey Sr.) being a former football player at New Castle High School, that does play a role. You sort of understand that concept.”

While Corey Sr. has urged his son to play, he said it’s been difficult not to watch the past two games. He’s always gone to any sporting event Corey Jr. has been involved in, whether it’s football, basketball or baseball.

He listened to the first game on the Internet, but wasn’t able to hear the second, a 46-6 win over Moon.

“It was real tough,” Corey Sr. said. “The one game, my friend came down and he brought his laptop so we could listen to the game. The other one, I couldn’t listen to it at all, and I was going crazy. I can’t go (today), but I’ll be sure to listen to it on the radio. It was really hard because I never miss anything — baseball, basketball, whatever it is. Everybody knows if Corey’s there, I’m there.”

LOOKING HEAD

Corey Sr. has endured five operations in all and has lost more than 20 pounds. Normally around 190, he’s down near Corey Jr.’s size, about 165.

“I went into the hospital three weeks ago from this Sunday,” he continued. “My first surgery was on that Tuesday. I had a heart catheter put in. They gave me, like, a day or two and then they gave me another heart catheterization because they thought they found the problem, so they went in to lance it. They thought they got it all, but then they had to go in again and put the valve in. Then they put in the pacemaker, then the defibrillator.”

The Egglestons’ worries finally ceased last night, when Corey Sr. was sent home from the hospital. He said the recovery will be a slow and rigorous process, something he found out the hard way.

“The first time I got out of bed to walk, all I did was walk, like, 30 yards down the hallway, and it felt like I ran five miles,” he said. “My body was so worn out.”

Still, he’s excited to be coming back to New Castle, staying with his mother for the time being and taking it easy. The road ahead won’t be an easy one, but he said he has to get healthy — it’s almost basketball season.

“I just want to be home and relax,” Corey Sr. said. “Being in the hospital, it seems like every five, 10 minutes someone’s at your door, poking you with this, telling you to take this. It’s like you can never get any real rest.

“I’m just happy to get out of there and get ready for basketball season. I can’t wait.”

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