Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/90407
migraine, Danny Spond is becoming a headache for opposing offenses Fully recovered from a debilitating ONE STEP AT A TIME defense was learning to avoid cut blocks and fill gaps against Na- vy's triple option, ju- nior Danny Spond was learning how to walk again. Team trainers re- T BY DAN MURPHY he week before Notre Dame's sea- son opener, while most of the Irish and temporarily para- lyzed the left side of his body. Like a crashed computer that loses its memory, Spond's nerve endings needed a jump- start and a refresher course on how to func- tion. "It hit so hard and minded him to land with pressure on his heel and roll it forward to his toes. They slowed him down when the pronounced limp re- turned to his left leg and they made him focus on each stride. Early in fall training camp, a rare type of migraine head- ache attacked the part of Spond's brain that controls motor skills it was so intense. It was a complete numb- ness," he said. "Like when your left arm falls asleep, that's what it felt like at all times, but it just covered the whole side of my body. It was a terrifying feel- ing." Not understanding doctors tried to find a problem. Spond spent four days trying to re- gain feeling in his limbs before making a long, silent drive to Michigan with his father, Don, to get a definitive answer about his health. His football future was an afterthought. "The best I was hoping where it came from was just as frighten- ing. Words like stroke, brain bleeding, tumors and surgery floated around his hospital room while the baffled for Dan's sake was let's take the year off," Don said. "You're going to be OK. Let's take the year off, and you'll hit it again next year. My wife and I were both saying let's just get our son back." Spond suffered a fa- milial hemiplegic mi- graine. It's a rare form of an extreme headache that is usually heredi- tary and often comes back more than once, according to Tad Seifert,