Big scare for Lakes' Muench

Showering used to be the best part of the day for Roger Muench.

"I'd get home from a tough football practice and I couldn't wait to stand in the shower and let the hot water relax my muscles," Muench said. "I'd be in there for like 30 minutes. It was great. I loved showers."

Not anymore.

Now, showers terrify Muench.

Because one little slip-up in the shower could paralyze Muench from the neck down for the rest of his life.

The Lakes senior lineman is lucky to be walking these days, lucky to be alive even. He is recovering from a fall at practice a few weeks ago that at first seemed like nothing major, but wound up causing quite a stir.

Trainers rushed over. Paramedics were called. An ambulance was brought to the field.

"It was just a normal play," Lakes coach Luke Mertens said. "Roger was up on the line and I guess he got hit at a weird angle. After the play was over, he was just lying there, completely motionless. He was going in and out of consciousness."

Muench, who showed no movement on his left side, was eventually airlifted by Flight for Life to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.

Doctors there discovered that he had broken the fourth and fifth vertebrae in his neck and had also cracked three discs in his lower back. They didn't know if he would regain movement on his left side, but determined that they wouldn't know for sure until all the swelling on his spine went down.

By the next day, the swelling had improved and Muench was starting to show movement on the left side. He improved rapidly from there.

Doctors eventually told him and his family that he was beyond lucky.

Had Muench landed slightly differently, he could have died, or in the least been paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life.

How slightly?

"They told me the width of a piece of paper," Muench said. "I get the shivers every time I think about that."

That's the same unsettling sensation Muench gets every time he has to take a shower. It's the most stressful part of his day.

Muench didn't have surgery to repair the broken vertebrae. Five days after his accident, he walked out of the hospital on his own with nothing more than a neck brace to show for his trouble.

But that neck brace is his lifeline. Doctors would like to avoid surgery and are using the brace to stabilize his neck as the ligaments surrounding the broken vertebrae regain their strength and pull the vertebrae back into place.

So Muench must wear his brace constantly - while he sleeps, even while he showers. The only time it is removed is after a shower. And only for a minute so that he can exchange the wet brace for a spare that is clean and dry.

Muench's mother and sister must be on hand to assist.

One holds Muench's head perfectly still while the other changes the brace.

They are literally holding Muench's life in their hands. One tiny movement in the wrong direction and Muench could be paralyzed.

"It's pretty scary," said Muench, who quickly regained consciousness at the hospital but remembers nothing about the day of the accident or the three days immediately after because there was so much swelling on his brain. "I still can't believe this happened to me and this is my life right now.

"But then I think about how lucky I am. I'm just happy to be here."

Muench returned to school for the first time last week. And he went to his first football game since the accident last Friday.

Muench, who can sleep for only two to three hours at a time before he wakes up in discomfort, knows pain. He says being on the football field again - and relegated to street clothes - was also a very painful experience for him.

Doctors have told him that not only is his high school football career over, he should also refrain from playing contact sports for the rest of his life.

"Going to that game was hard. It was horrible, actually. I got really emotional on the sidelines," said Muench, one of the most popular players on the team. "I wasn't the greatest football player, but I really loved the sport. All I did the last four years was football, football, football. This just doesn't seem right."

Neither does Muench's hard-knock life.

If this whole injury ordeal wasn't enough, Muench has had to deal with all kinds of strife in his personal life as well.

He was abandoned as a young child and was moved from foster home to foster home until he found a loving home two years ago with his current parents - Joe and Dalene Valentine of Lake Villa.

"I was sent all over the place," Muench said. "I've spent time in homes in four or five different states, I've been all over the city (of Chicago) - South Side, North Side, the suburbs. I've been in group homes. I just had a lot of trouble growing up.

"Now I live in a nice home and life was starting to look up and then this happened."

But Muench, who will wear his brace for the next three weeks until doctors reevaluate him, refuses to let his circumstances bring him down. He's come too far for that.

"I've always thought I should share the story of my life and everything I've been through with people and this thing with my neck pushes me more to get out and do it-to be a role model for people. I think I want to be a motivational speaker," Muench said. "I try to stay positive. I wake up looking forward to every day because-I can walk. Yeah, there's this little black cloud in my life because I don't have football anymore. But I've got a lot of sunshine, too."