San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Flannery battling a major health problem
Again and again, Tim Flannery fumbles for the words to adequately explain how a life-threatening staph infection upended his world, how his family has been pure granite, how the army of medical experts from Scripps Health hospitals in San Diego moonlight as angels.
Thoughts tangle for the rough-and-routinely-tumble former Padres infielder who won three World Series rings as third-base coach for the San Francisco Giants.
It began with general fatigue, then a strange, relentless itching sensation in his back as he used a chainsaw on a tree at “my little off-the-grid ranch” north of Point Conception. The next day, he buckled to his knees as his back spasmed and gave out.
Flannery’s doctor diagnosed a staph infection. The former player, one of those “tape an aspirin to it” types, thought it simply required a trip to the chiropractor.
“He told me, ‘I really believe you have a serious infection. It’s not a chiropractor thing; it’s in your bloodstream,’ ” Flannery, in his first public comments since falling ill, said Thursday in a telephone interview. “He nailed it.”
That began an extended hospital stay Oct. 18. Surgery and a blur of procedures followed before he was released earlier this month. Now, he’s back.
The swirl ranges from crushing disappointment to an emotional, overflowing well of thankfulness.
“When they brought me in here they said, ‘You could die in a week,’ ” said Flannery, fighting through tears as he began to explain the commitment of his roundthe-clock caretakers. “They’re in here every 15 minutes working on you, fixing you. The people at Scripps are top of the line, man.”
As Flannery chronicles the seizures and hallucinations he has experienced, the unquestioned seriousness of it all becomes uncomfortably clear. The infection is elusive, tough to pinpoint and a stubborn medical mule. Doctors are
unsure of how it originated, though he was told it can settle in the location of former injuries.
There’s not a rotator cuff, knee or ankle on Flannery that has dodged the surgical knife.
“I’ve been grinding,” Flannery said.
On Thursday, Flannery rattled off that day’s activities: a speech therapist, a physical therapist and “another therapist to learn about living in your house and not crash into everything.” His left knee has swollen to the size of his thigh. He stopped counting the number of MRIS. Needles that made him faint as a player each spring training are now a daily occurrence.
The prognosis remains a mystery, he said, likening it to the critical innings of a playoff game.
“All we can do is continue to battle and move on,” he said. “We’re all going to have things we deal with life. Life isn’t for sissies, man.”
Flannery’s funny, ornery core peeks above the health fray. The meeting with the speech therapist morphed into a debate about whether the visit was needed.
“He said, ‘Have you ever had speech therapy?’ ” Flannery said. “I said, ‘I’ve got 13 records out.’ He said, ‘OK, you’re fine.’ ”
Flannery began to explain his beloved ranch, where he flees to disconnect.
“I was out there to start living a new way of life,” he said. “I was farming, had 40 orchard trees, over 150 potato (plants), the whole ball of wax. I was working every day in the soil. I had big cages set up to keep the animals out.
“I use the great Felipe Alou line, ‘Who are we fighting today?’ One day it was deer, one day it was coyotes, one day it was a mountain lion. I actually loved it.”
Still, the tears flow. He’s staggered and scared. He’s uncertain what the next hour or day will bring. He bounces from demoralized to cautiously defiant. He’s trying to leverage his toughness as a player to even the scorecard.
Most of all, he’s grateful beyond words.
“The outpouring has been so special, I thought I should step up, explain what’s going on and thank everybody,” he said.
The baseball blood in Flannery initially caused him to sidestep help, until his family recruited friends in the medical field for an on-the-fly intervention.
“It’s like being a player, you suck it up,” said Flannery, 63. “You don’t take days off. That’s who we were as people.”
Staph infections that enter the bloodstream, joints, bones, lungs or heart can become life-threatening, according to the Mayo Clinic. In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control identified more than 119,000 cases of bloodstream staph infections in the United States. Nearly one in six died.
Flannery’s jaw drops at the medical firepower at his side, but also knows his situation remains extremely serious.
“They think they can beat it,” he said. “They’re on it. They’re the top of the line.”
The man who played for 11 seasons, including the 1984 World Series run with the Padres, understands digging in for a fight.
“You get knocked down, you get back up,” Flannery said.
There are more people ready to dust him off than he can count.