Four Nations Soccer Tournament

An UncleLar niece will be making her overseas debut with the US National Soccer team in a few hours (3AM Friday to be exact). Joanna Lohman, who was a two time Hermann Award finalist (Soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy) while she was at Penn State, plays midfield for the US. J-Lo, as she is not so surprisingly known, has played in seven matches for the US team here in the states but this is her first trip overseas with the team.

The Four Nations Tournament is being held in Guangzhou China and is considered a warm-up for the World Cup later this year. The #2 ranked in the world US women open the tournament against the #1 world ranked German squad. They will follow this match up with one against England on Sunday, then face the host Chinese on Tuesday.

Here’s a photo of J-Lo with the we’re-in-China obligatory ping pong pose (she’s the one on the right)

The right place… the right time…

A good friend of mine just went through a most harrowing experience. Tom Minsker is one of my regular golfing partners. We usually play together 3-4 times a week. Two weeks ago today, he returned to town from 10 days down in Myrtle Beach. When he got up on Monday his back was bothering him. Tom didn’t think much of it. He’s had some hip and back problems recently and just figured the long drive back from Myrtle just exacerbated something.

He had a regular check up with his doctor scheduled for Monday morning to make sure there were no complications with the steroids he’s taking for his hip. He mentioned the back pain to his doctor and the doctor agreed that it was probably from the drive but said if it got worse to come back in.

After the doc said the meds looked like they were working well, Tom headed back home. But the back pain persisted. By about three in the afteroon, Tom decided to head back to the doctors. After getting in his car and pulling out of the driveway though, he decided the pain was enough he ought to just head to the emergency room.

When he got there they signed him in, got his personal info, and directed him to the triage nurse. The nurse took a quick look at Tom and could see he was in considerable pain so she called him in ahead of a couple of other patients. A doctor looked at Tom and sent him to get a CAT scan, saying that he’d be back with the results in about 30-35 minutes.

15 minutes later the doctor came hurrying down the hall and told Tom he had a problem that needed immediate attention but that they weren’t prepared to handle it at the local hospital. He said that the nearest hospital with the right facilities was Geisinger in Danville which is about 75 miles away. Tom asked who he should get in touch with at Geisinger and how he should go about scheduling an appointment. The doctor replied that “when I said “immediate attention I wasn’t referring to scheduling anything”. He added “we have the helicopter warming up and you needed to be in the air 5 minutes ago”.

Tom said with that they started wheeling him down the corridor and loading him on the helicopter. That’s the last thing that Tom remembers until he woke up in Geisinger two days later.

It turns out that Tom had an abdominal aortic aneurysm. That’s a condition where the aortic artery, as it passes behind the stomach, swells into a bubble. If the bubble is small, it can be treated with drugs and carefully watched to make sure it doesn’t rupture. If the bubble is large it needs to be treated surgically, either by inserting a stent through an artery in your leg or by full abdominal surgery where the open your gut up and put an artificial artery in you bypassing the bubble. Whatever approach that is taken it’s important to treat the aneurysm before it ruptures. Only 40% of aortic aneurysm patients survive an abdominal rupture. For comparison purposes about 60% of heart attack victims survive.

In Tom’s case, the aneurysm was already starting to rupture. It was leaking, which was what was causing the back pain, and full blown rupture was imminent which is why they had to immediately helicopter him to the other hospital. As it turns out, it did rupture shortly after they got Tom in the air. His heart stopped and they had to perform CPR. The helicopter actually returned to the local hospital where they were able to stabilize Tom then get him back in the air and to Geisinger where he underwent six hours of surgery.

Had Tom been anywhere else but right next to some emergency medical personnel when the rupture happened he probably would have been a goner. It’s doubtful that anyone would have been able to reach him in time to save him. He was incredibly fortunate that he decided to head to the hospital with his back pain.

He’s back home now with few restrictions – no heavy lifting and no driving for a few weeks but other than that (and one big scar on his belly) he’s no worse for wear. He’s quite fortunate.

I feel redemption

You may remember my ill fated campaign to name the local State College baseball team a couple of years ago. I nominated Sliders and my idea made the cutoff from 5000 suggestions that the team received. I was pumped and started encouraging my friends to vote for Sliders in the contest. I thought I had a pretty good chance of advancing to the final round when the list was to be shortened and a re-vote held.

Not everyone saw it that way however. A writer for the local paper (not a sports reporter by the way) published the following column where he ridiculed ALL the names on the ballot. He choose my nominee for the headline of his colunn “Race for local baseball team name slow going — a turtle!” (note: Sliders is a breed of turtles – the ones that you find in pet stores are typically Slider turtles).

When the time came for the finalists to be announced, I was devastated. Not only didn’t I make the finals but NONE of the semifinalists did. The ball club threw out all seven names and came up with five new ones. What the?

Eventually, the name Spikes won out. While I thought the name was ok, I was still a firm believer that Sliders was equally good.

Now comes my redemption. Slippery Rock PA has just announced the name of their new minor league baseball team. You guessed it – the Slippery Rock Sliders. Sliders was the winning selection picked from 92 unique entries.

Here’s their logo:

I have ordered a Slider hat from their official supplier and will be wearing it proudly around town.