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"Friggin Joke Monkey"
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Sorry if this is a repost. I looked and didn't see it anywhere. It came out a few days ago in the DMN's "local" section. David Moore did a nice job with this.
Dallas Cowboys assistant coach shows true grit in comeback
By DAVID MOORE / The Dallas Morning News
IRVING – There are moments he is free of that day.
Lost in the rhythm of the Dallas Cowboys' weight room, Joe DeCamillis' heart pounds and muscles throb as he strains to lift what months earlier was an afterthought. He feels good until the impulse to look over his shoulder causes his head to scrape against the titanium rods and screws that anchor his neck and vertebrae. A sharp pain shoots up his spine.
Stubborn only gets you so far.
Joe should be a quadriplegic after that spring afternoon. He's not, because the injury was so severe it cracked open his spinal canal rather than crushing bone and sinew into it.
Coaching this season was unlikely. If he did return, doctors told him, it would have to be in the press box, far removed from the danger of the sidelines.
He was back on the practice field two weeks later. He has worked the sidelines as special teams coach for every Cowboys game this season and will be there again today to yell and cuss and encourage his players against Atlanta.
Joe alternately amazes and frustrates those around him. He has little to no feeling in three fingers on his right hand and grows weary trying to hold his head up during 17-hour work days. He sleeps in a beat-up, brown recliner at his home and is in constant pain, yet he refuses to take anything other than an anti-inflammatory shot on the day of a game.
"What I love about him makes me crazy," said his wife, Dana. "But that's him.
"I'm not a dramatic person. I'm really not. But Joe is a miracle."
Hanging by a thread
It is May 2. The Cowboys move their practice inside as thunderstorms roll through Valley Ranch.
It's hard to hear the person next to you as rain pelts the top of the facility. Lights begin to sway and within seconds, a violent burst of wind rips through the canopy. Sparks fly as the aluminum structure collapses into a heap that will spawn pain and lawsuits for months to come.
During a rare day off, coach Joe DeCamillis still watches football. He sleeps in a recliner after being hurt in the Valley Ranch facility collapse in May.
Joe worries that his wife will hear the news on TV. Nothing is wrong with him other than his neck hurts. He grabs the phone after he walks back to his office and calls.
"The dome fell on me, but I'm feeling fine," he tells Dana.
"What?"
"The dome fell on me," Joe repeats, "but I'm feeling fine."
Once he hangs up with Dana, he receives a frantic call from one of his daughters. Caitlin DeCamillis is a nursing student at Auburn University. By now, Joe's neck is killing him and something else isn't right.
"Dad, if you don't have any feeling in your hands, lay down and don't move," she says.
No one can say for sure what would have happened if Joe didn't follow his daughter's advice before the paramedics arrived. But Dana knows.
"If you see the X-ray, she probably saved his life," Dana said. "His spinal cord was literally hanging by a thread."
The damage is devastating. Joe has four fractured vertebrae. His lower cervical and upper thoracic spine must be reconstructed.
Dr. Howard Morgan is the professor of neurosurgery at UT Southwestern. It has been more than 30 years since he's cared for a patient with injuries this extensive who wasn't paralyzed for the rest of his life. He performs the surgery along with chief resident Atif Haque.
Two days later at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Joe spends more than five hours on the operating table. A 13-inch incision is made as doctors' slice through the muscles in his neck and back. Morgan removes a rib on the right side between the sixth and seventh vertebrae to use as a bone graft so his patient's neck won't slip and compress the spinal cord.
Morgan implants two titanium rods that span from C5 to T3. The reconstruction requires 10 titanium screws, five on each side.
Five months later, when DeCamillis goes in for an MRI, he must change machines because the "extensive instrumentation" in his neck, as Morgan calls it, disrupts the magnet in the first device.
The road back
One of the first conversations Morgan has with his patient after the surgery is about his job.
"We'll have to see how it heals," Morgan says. "I don't know how soon you can go back to coaching or if you can this season. If you do, it will have to be from the press box."
In addition to a neck brace, DeCamillis needed a bullhorn to address his players in practice. He worried about looking weak, then learned the horn was Tom Landry's.
"I can't do it from the press box," Joe responds. "That's not really an option."
The back and forth continues as Morgan emphasizes the severity of the injury.
"We'll see," Joe says.
Morgan acknowledges later he has doubts that Joe will be able to coach again. But post-operative imaging studies show that his patient is healing unusually quickly. X-rays and a CT scan show he has an excellent realignment of his fracture. It's also clear that motivation isn't an issue.
Fifteen days after the surgery, the Cowboys are practicing. The team must move to Carrollton's Standridge Stadium because the practice fields at Valley Ranch have yet to recover from the storm.
Joe can't dress or bathe himself. He's in a neck brace. Both hands are numb. Yet he talks Dana into driving him to practice so he can sit in the stands and watch. She turns away for a moment to talk to a friend and the next thing she knows, her husband has made his way to the middle of the field.
Dana understands. Her husband coached for the Jacksonville Jaguars the previous season and has only been with the Cowboys a few months. He needs to show the players what he's about, how passionate he is about his job. But there's a problem.
Joe must use a bullhorn. He's concerned about what the players will think. He's afraid it makes him look weak. Bucky Buchanan, the Cowboys' assistant equipment manager, points to the name on a frayed piece of tape on the handle.
This was the bullhorn Tom Landry used when he coached the team.
"That made it OK," Dana says.
Dana has experience with mulish men. Her father is Dan Reeves. The former Cowboys player and assistant coach was head coach of the Atlanta Falcons 11 years ago when he had to undergo a quadruple bypass with two weeks left in the regular season. He was back on the field three weeks later to lead the team to its first and only Super Bowl appearance.
Reeves calls his son-in-law at least once a day for weeks after the surgery. The injury rarely comes up. The two discuss football. Reeves knows the best rehab is to get his son-in-law's mind on the task at hand.
Two months after the surgery, the feeling returns in Joe's left hand. About that time, he tells his wife to stop giving him the four different pills and muscle relaxers he takes to manage the pain. He has seen players become addicted.
He stops cold turkey.
"I feel like I live with John Wayne sometimes," Dana says.
DeCamillis ignores his doctor's suggestion to work training camp from a golf cart and spend the preseason games in the press box. The team breaks camp on a Wednesday in late August and returns to Dallas. Joe sees Morgan the next day and is told he can resume driving a car in short bursts.
At 5 a.m. the following Monday, when Dana is still asleep, Joe is out the door to make the 18-mile drive from his home in Frisco to Valley Ranch. Dana doesn't realize he's gone until a few hours later when their other daughter, Ashley, tells her mother that Dad drove to work.
Dana isn't happy. She still isn't.
"That sounds like Joe," Morgan says.
Living with pain
Joe hits the Starbucks near the team's practice facility by 5:30 a.m. He arrives at One Cowboys Parkway a few minutes later and won't leave until 9:30 or 10 in the evening.
He feels better and better. The 30-minute workouts he has with strength and conditioning coach Joe Juraszek have done wonders for his flexibility. He has regained 50 percent of the range of motion in his head and neck. The grip is slowly coming back in his right hand, though for now it is limited to his index finger and thumb.
His hands go numb when he's over a computer for too long, and he must get up and walk around. The fatigue of holding his head up all day with muscles that were sliced apart in surgery can make it hard to concentrate.
"When you start worrying about that, it's kind of feeling sorry for yourself, and I'm not going to do that," Joe says. "Every time I start to feel sorry for myself, I look at Rich and I know that things could be a lot worse."
Scouting assistant Rich Behm was in the practice facility that May afternoon. He must use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Joe and Behm have lawsuits pending against several companies involved in the construction and renovation of the practice facility that collapsed.
Scouting coordinator Chris Hall and assistant athletic trainer Greg Gaither also suffered significant injuries. All are back at work and have been for some time.
Joe takes a shot of Toradol, an anti-inflammatory drug for moderate to severe pain, before every game. This usually carries him midway through the third quarter before it begins to wear off. In the cold, damp air of Kansas City, Mo., two weeks ago, the shot had no effect at all. The flight home was agony.
Watching the game is agony for family and friends. Morgan cringes when he catches the Cowboys on TV and sees Joe on the sidelines.
Dana watches Joe more than the games these days and prays no one plows into her husband. The excitement of linebacker Keith Brooking, who head-butts coaches on the sidelines after big plays, makes her nervous. Brooking used to seek out Joe to head-butt when the two were in Atlanta.
Joe misses this interaction. One of his biggest frustrations as he fights his way back is a low energy level.
"Joe still has that same intensity and fire," Brooking says. "You've just got to know him and look into his eyes.
"It is hard for him to show it because of his injury. But it's the same old Joe to me."
Morgan calls his patient's recovery remarkable. Still, some of the damage is permanent. He will never regain full motion of his head and neck. His hands may never regain full strength. He will be stiff the rest of his life.
Joe responds much the way he did when told he might not coach this season.
"If you give in to anything, to a health issue, a personal issue, anything, you will not be as successful as you can be," he says. "This is an obstacle I want to overcome.
"The way I look at it, I don't have an option."
Dallas Cowboys assistant coach shows true grit in comeback
By DAVID MOORE / The Dallas Morning News
IRVING – There are moments he is free of that day.
Lost in the rhythm of the Dallas Cowboys' weight room, Joe DeCamillis' heart pounds and muscles throb as he strains to lift what months earlier was an afterthought. He feels good until the impulse to look over his shoulder causes his head to scrape against the titanium rods and screws that anchor his neck and vertebrae. A sharp pain shoots up his spine.
Stubborn only gets you so far.
Joe should be a quadriplegic after that spring afternoon. He's not, because the injury was so severe it cracked open his spinal canal rather than crushing bone and sinew into it.
Coaching this season was unlikely. If he did return, doctors told him, it would have to be in the press box, far removed from the danger of the sidelines.
He was back on the practice field two weeks later. He has worked the sidelines as special teams coach for every Cowboys game this season and will be there again today to yell and cuss and encourage his players against Atlanta.
Joe alternately amazes and frustrates those around him. He has little to no feeling in three fingers on his right hand and grows weary trying to hold his head up during 17-hour work days. He sleeps in a beat-up, brown recliner at his home and is in constant pain, yet he refuses to take anything other than an anti-inflammatory shot on the day of a game.
"What I love about him makes me crazy," said his wife, Dana. "But that's him.
"I'm not a dramatic person. I'm really not. But Joe is a miracle."
Hanging by a thread
It is May 2. The Cowboys move their practice inside as thunderstorms roll through Valley Ranch.
It's hard to hear the person next to you as rain pelts the top of the facility. Lights begin to sway and within seconds, a violent burst of wind rips through the canopy. Sparks fly as the aluminum structure collapses into a heap that will spawn pain and lawsuits for months to come.
During a rare day off, coach Joe DeCamillis still watches football. He sleeps in a recliner after being hurt in the Valley Ranch facility collapse in May.
Joe worries that his wife will hear the news on TV. Nothing is wrong with him other than his neck hurts. He grabs the phone after he walks back to his office and calls.
"The dome fell on me, but I'm feeling fine," he tells Dana.
"What?"
"The dome fell on me," Joe repeats, "but I'm feeling fine."
Once he hangs up with Dana, he receives a frantic call from one of his daughters. Caitlin DeCamillis is a nursing student at Auburn University. By now, Joe's neck is killing him and something else isn't right.
"Dad, if you don't have any feeling in your hands, lay down and don't move," she says.
No one can say for sure what would have happened if Joe didn't follow his daughter's advice before the paramedics arrived. But Dana knows.
"If you see the X-ray, she probably saved his life," Dana said. "His spinal cord was literally hanging by a thread."
The damage is devastating. Joe has four fractured vertebrae. His lower cervical and upper thoracic spine must be reconstructed.
Dr. Howard Morgan is the professor of neurosurgery at UT Southwestern. It has been more than 30 years since he's cared for a patient with injuries this extensive who wasn't paralyzed for the rest of his life. He performs the surgery along with chief resident Atif Haque.
Two days later at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Joe spends more than five hours on the operating table. A 13-inch incision is made as doctors' slice through the muscles in his neck and back. Morgan removes a rib on the right side between the sixth and seventh vertebrae to use as a bone graft so his patient's neck won't slip and compress the spinal cord.
Morgan implants two titanium rods that span from C5 to T3. The reconstruction requires 10 titanium screws, five on each side.
Five months later, when DeCamillis goes in for an MRI, he must change machines because the "extensive instrumentation" in his neck, as Morgan calls it, disrupts the magnet in the first device.
The road back
One of the first conversations Morgan has with his patient after the surgery is about his job.
"We'll have to see how it heals," Morgan says. "I don't know how soon you can go back to coaching or if you can this season. If you do, it will have to be from the press box."
In addition to a neck brace, DeCamillis needed a bullhorn to address his players in practice. He worried about looking weak, then learned the horn was Tom Landry's.
"I can't do it from the press box," Joe responds. "That's not really an option."
The back and forth continues as Morgan emphasizes the severity of the injury.
"We'll see," Joe says.
Morgan acknowledges later he has doubts that Joe will be able to coach again. But post-operative imaging studies show that his patient is healing unusually quickly. X-rays and a CT scan show he has an excellent realignment of his fracture. It's also clear that motivation isn't an issue.
Fifteen days after the surgery, the Cowboys are practicing. The team must move to Carrollton's Standridge Stadium because the practice fields at Valley Ranch have yet to recover from the storm.
Joe can't dress or bathe himself. He's in a neck brace. Both hands are numb. Yet he talks Dana into driving him to practice so he can sit in the stands and watch. She turns away for a moment to talk to a friend and the next thing she knows, her husband has made his way to the middle of the field.
Dana understands. Her husband coached for the Jacksonville Jaguars the previous season and has only been with the Cowboys a few months. He needs to show the players what he's about, how passionate he is about his job. But there's a problem.
Joe must use a bullhorn. He's concerned about what the players will think. He's afraid it makes him look weak. Bucky Buchanan, the Cowboys' assistant equipment manager, points to the name on a frayed piece of tape on the handle.
This was the bullhorn Tom Landry used when he coached the team.
"That made it OK," Dana says.
Dana has experience with mulish men. Her father is Dan Reeves. The former Cowboys player and assistant coach was head coach of the Atlanta Falcons 11 years ago when he had to undergo a quadruple bypass with two weeks left in the regular season. He was back on the field three weeks later to lead the team to its first and only Super Bowl appearance.
Reeves calls his son-in-law at least once a day for weeks after the surgery. The injury rarely comes up. The two discuss football. Reeves knows the best rehab is to get his son-in-law's mind on the task at hand.
Two months after the surgery, the feeling returns in Joe's left hand. About that time, he tells his wife to stop giving him the four different pills and muscle relaxers he takes to manage the pain. He has seen players become addicted.
He stops cold turkey.
"I feel like I live with John Wayne sometimes," Dana says.
DeCamillis ignores his doctor's suggestion to work training camp from a golf cart and spend the preseason games in the press box. The team breaks camp on a Wednesday in late August and returns to Dallas. Joe sees Morgan the next day and is told he can resume driving a car in short bursts.
At 5 a.m. the following Monday, when Dana is still asleep, Joe is out the door to make the 18-mile drive from his home in Frisco to Valley Ranch. Dana doesn't realize he's gone until a few hours later when their other daughter, Ashley, tells her mother that Dad drove to work.
Dana isn't happy. She still isn't.
"That sounds like Joe," Morgan says.
Living with pain
Joe hits the Starbucks near the team's practice facility by 5:30 a.m. He arrives at One Cowboys Parkway a few minutes later and won't leave until 9:30 or 10 in the evening.
He feels better and better. The 30-minute workouts he has with strength and conditioning coach Joe Juraszek have done wonders for his flexibility. He has regained 50 percent of the range of motion in his head and neck. The grip is slowly coming back in his right hand, though for now it is limited to his index finger and thumb.
His hands go numb when he's over a computer for too long, and he must get up and walk around. The fatigue of holding his head up all day with muscles that were sliced apart in surgery can make it hard to concentrate.
"When you start worrying about that, it's kind of feeling sorry for yourself, and I'm not going to do that," Joe says. "Every time I start to feel sorry for myself, I look at Rich and I know that things could be a lot worse."
Scouting assistant Rich Behm was in the practice facility that May afternoon. He must use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Joe and Behm have lawsuits pending against several companies involved in the construction and renovation of the practice facility that collapsed.
Scouting coordinator Chris Hall and assistant athletic trainer Greg Gaither also suffered significant injuries. All are back at work and have been for some time.
Joe takes a shot of Toradol, an anti-inflammatory drug for moderate to severe pain, before every game. This usually carries him midway through the third quarter before it begins to wear off. In the cold, damp air of Kansas City, Mo., two weeks ago, the shot had no effect at all. The flight home was agony.
Watching the game is agony for family and friends. Morgan cringes when he catches the Cowboys on TV and sees Joe on the sidelines.
Dana watches Joe more than the games these days and prays no one plows into her husband. The excitement of linebacker Keith Brooking, who head-butts coaches on the sidelines after big plays, makes her nervous. Brooking used to seek out Joe to head-butt when the two were in Atlanta.
Joe misses this interaction. One of his biggest frustrations as he fights his way back is a low energy level.
"Joe still has that same intensity and fire," Brooking says. "You've just got to know him and look into his eyes.
"It is hard for him to show it because of his injury. But it's the same old Joe to me."
Morgan calls his patient's recovery remarkable. Still, some of the damage is permanent. He will never regain full motion of his head and neck. His hands may never regain full strength. He will be stiff the rest of his life.
Joe responds much the way he did when told he might not coach this season.
"If you give in to anything, to a health issue, a personal issue, anything, you will not be as successful as you can be," he says. "This is an obstacle I want to overcome.
"The way I look at it, I don't have an option."
