Constable: Daily Herald photographer knows what Sox pitcher has endured
By Burt Constable
bconstable@dailyherald.com
If White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar, who remains in critical condition after a ruptured brain aneurysm, needs a role model, he can look to Daily Herald photographer Bev Horne.
Farquhar, 31, had just retired the Houston Astros in the top of the 6th inning at Guaranteed Rate Field on Friday when he collapsed in the dugout.
Horne was in a restaurant when she experienced an eerily similar collapse from a ruptured aneurysm at age 52 on July 27, 2014, in Arlington Heights. "As we were sitting there talking and eating, all of a sudden, a really bad headache came on," she says.
She and a friend were going to go to a drugstore to buy some Tylenol, but Horne never made it.
"I got to the door and fell back and lost my balance and dropped down," she says. "I don't remember anything after that."
Horne's friend called 911, and paramedics delivered her to nearby Northwest Community Hospital.
"I happened to be 10 minutes from there, and that's what saved me," Horne says. Doctors immediately stuck a device into her head to drain fluid and reduce the pressure.
White Sox trainer Herm Schneider and assistant trainer Brian Ball summoned paramedics, who took Farquhar to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Farquhar had surgery on Saturday.
In the ambulance, paramedics asked Horne to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10, and she was shouting, "10, 10, 10!"
Before that, her day had been perfectly normal. "There was no warning whatsoever," says Horne. She had none of the contributing factors such as high blood-pressure or smoking.
Doctors told her that she probably had the weakened blood vessel since birth.
"It's very rare that they rupture," Horne says. "I'm super, super lucky."
Ruptured brain aneurysms are fatal in 40 percent of cases, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. About two-thirds of those who survive suffer permanent neurological deficits.
The White Sox released a statement Monday afternoon saying Farquhar "is progressing well following a successful surgery Saturday" and that he has use of his extremities, is responding properly to questions and commands, and is speaking to doctors.
Healthy today and enjoying a vacation in Austria, Horne says her recovery was an ordeal. At risk for a stroke, Horne spent her first two weeks after the ruptured aneurysm in the intensive care unit,
"I had no short-term memory," Horne says, recalling how she'd recognize co-workers when they visited but instantly forget they had come. "I have zero memory of my time in the hospital. I kept having to ask what happened."
Three weeks after her aneurysm ruptured, she transferred to a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, to undergo therapy and be closer to her mother, Nancy. She stayed with her mom for another two months, and her mother kept track of medications and appointments.
"I was in a foggy, dreamlike state," Horne says, as loved ones waited to see if, and how much, she'd recover. "My mom could see my gradual improvement, but you don't know with the brain."
She returned to work part time that December and went back to being a full-time photographer after the holidays. But her issues weren't over.
"Everything that first year was pretty rough," Horne says. "I had depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, exhaustion. It took a year to heal."
Even now, she says she thinks about her ruptured aneurysm every day.
"Nothing's ever been the same," Horne says. "Outwardly, nobody knows anything happened to me. But inside, it's different."
Every aneurysm is different, and Horne obviously wishes that Farquhar makes a similar recovery. Never needing brain surgery, Horne says doctors threaded coils through an artery and into her brain. The platinum coils induce clotting and prevent further bleeding or rupturing of the aneurysm. Her annual brain scans have been so good that she now is scheduled to have a scan only every other year.
"I'm super fortunate," Horne says. "I can go on living my life."