It was just a game of pickup basketball, the fellas would understand...
Two springs ago Gabe Allen was kicking it at his family’s Ainsworth home when his phone went off. It was a text from his cousin, Caleb Allen, encouraging Gabe to come on over for what would surely be an epic pickup basketball game. With nothing pressing on his schedule Gabe leapt at the invitation, and that’s when the trouble started.
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Gabe Allen is a naturally big boy, today as he approaches his senior year in high school he’s going 6-2 and three hundy. That’s remarkable enough but he was that big as a sophomore, and as a freshman, and as an eight-grader and as a seventh-grader. Six-two, three hundy, that’s a lot of seventh grader but not necessarily a world record, at least not in the Allen household.
“It was weird being that much bigger than the other kids in school but in my family I’m not even big, I’m average,” he points out. Indeed, his older brother by ten years, Nathaniel, was a recruited walk-on for the Huskers, and his other older brother, Ben is also a full cut suit coat.
In seventh grade the weight limits that dogged him in youth football went away. All bets were off in junior high football and the big fella took immediate advantage, playing running back. Yep, running back.
“That was super fun. It’s what a big guy wants to do,” he says, relishing the memory.
Also during that time Gabe had his first brush with Ainsworth varsity football and he and his cousin Caleb were student managers for the team. They were not alone.
“We had, like, 14 student managers back then. It was pretty crazy,” he says, and you agree.
When you go 6-2, three hundy the football coach tends to believe you’ll have a role on the team and Gabe started almost immediately in his freshman season. And almost immediately failed.
“On the second play I was in there I gave up an 80-yard touchdown run right over my spot in the line. Not great,” he says, flashing that big smile of his, enjoying the snarkiness of his account of the moment. But things settled down from there and Gabe became a key member in both lines for the first Ainsworth football team to make the playoffs in 26 years, and for only the third time in school history.
“So that was cool.”
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Gabe had earlier suffered through a bout with Influenza A and so the soreness he felt, especially in his calves, seemed like an after effect that just wouldn’t go away. Sore or not, he wanted to hoop it up with his friends so he got up from his chair and headed for the door.
He collapsed after one step, went straight to the floor.
Sometimes a person just knows things and Gabe knew his collapse was something serious and his mind started racing. “I immediately knew it was bad and thought I had a tumor or something like that. I just knew I was going to die of cancer anytime now.”
Not wanting to startle his parents Gabe made no mention of his fall but when he awoke the next morning he was terrified - he couldn’t feel. Couldn’t feel anything. With the help of his parents he was able to get to the ER where the medical officials examined him, suggested even the fall was part of his healing from the flu, gave him some meds and sent him home. He’d be OK soon, they said.
He was not.
After a couple of days of hobbling about the house Gabe fell again. Remember, he’s 6-2, three hundy, and now it’s dead weight. His parents couldn’t help him get up so they called the local fire department, who dispatched two EMTs to assist Gabe.
“I was paralyzed at that point but it was weird because I could still feel pain,” he remembers. After 15 minutes of getting organized the EMTs were able to load Gabe into the ambulance and return him to the hospital.
Once there the local doctors were baffled by his condition, saying they’d never seen a situation quite like his. He was immediately transferred to Children’s Hospital in Omaha, then to the NU Med Center, and by then it was 11 o’clock at night. Been a long day but it got longer for Gabe and his family as once they got him settled he underwent a CAT scan, two MRIs and a spinal tap. Water tasted terrible to him and so he’d not drank any for most of three days and his mouth was so dry. At the Med Center he was able to tolerate chewing on some ice cubes.
Either way, Gabe Allen was in tough shape.
They call it Gullain Barre Syndrome. It is a rare disorder in which your body’s immune system attacks your nerves. Weakness and tingling in your extremities are usually the first symptoms. These sensations can quickly spread, eventually paralyzing your whole body.
Gabe Allen had contracted Gullain Barre Syndrome.
It is an extraordinarily rare condition - Gabe contracting it was a one-in-a-million long shot - but two-thirds of its victims report having had an infection within six weeks of their first symptoms. Gabe had suffered through that bout of Influenza A and that served as a gateway to his condition.
“It’s not necessarily their fault but at first they gave me false hope, saying my treatment would take a month or so, but they also said it was a treatment and not a cure. There is no cure for this,” he says.
It was more than a month. After being discharged from the hospital he was sent to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital where he was again told he hoped he’d be for a couple of weeks, and his doctor initially said it would take a month. He was there for 10 weeks, undergoing eight and nine hours of rehab per day.
Sports? They were out of the question.
They were just hoping to get Gabe walking again.
“Outside of my therapy I would do stuff on my own, like getting on my hands and knees and doing some really bad push-ups and sit ups. I would also be in my wheel chair and it would recline so I would force myself to sit forward in the chair from a reclined position. My goal was to make it another inch farther back each week,” says Gabe.
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It was a month-and-a-half before he could walk.
“It was always a risk when I would try to walk because if I fell I would be hard to get back up, but luckily I didn’t fall there,” says Gabe.
Finally, after months away from home Gabe made his triumphant return to his home town last May 26. At 3 p.m. The date and time are burned into his memory because of all its greatness.
“They had the fire trucks lined up and the sirens blaring, there was a ton of people there, from my church and from my school including some teachers and a lot of my friends,” he happily recalls. “We were there for 30 minutes or so but then they needed to get me home. We had a bunch of friends over that night and it was so great to see them after being gone for four months.”
Once he returned home to Ainsworth he continued his physical therapy for four more months, two hours per day twice a week.
Once he got more steady on his feet Gabe started to enjoy progressively longer walks with his mom Erin and would show up at the high school weight room to see what he could get done, which wasn’t much. By this summer he also started hanging out at the American Legion baseball games so he could spend time being around his friends.
Which is one of the more magical moments in his journey to recovery unfolded.
It was game night and Gabe was in the dugout, doing bat boy things, when the team’s manager, Jessi Owen, who also happens to be Gabe’s football coach, handed him a bat. Gabe dutifully turned to put the bat in the rack when Coach Owen stopped him and said, “no Gabe, the bat’s for you. Go take a swing.”
Without him knowing it the team had arranged for him to bat leadoff, sorta. With bat in hand Gabe walked slowly to home plate where he had a real live pitch thrown to him. He made contact and ran to first base - “it wasn’t really running,” says Gabe - the first time he’d “ran” since before all this mess started. It was an awesome moment for all involved.
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So what about high school sports? Such involvement seemed like a pipe dream for much of the past year and change - Gabe couldn’t even pick himself up off the floor until last September. But over the winter he was able to do a little more weight lifting, taking part in some of the basketball team’s practices and conditioning drills, even playing briefly in a JV game or two. Frustrating? Sure.
“But I was OK with it, at least I was moving. There were many times I didn’t know if I’d ever do that again.”
Over the past few months Gabe has made steady progress in his return to full healthy. You look at him today, all 6-2 and three hundy with some five o’clock shadow for good measure, and you listen to him talk - Gabe is one hilariously snarky kid - and you have to smile. It’s a miracle he’s gotten this far.
That’s not to say he’s all the way home. While his weight has returned and he looks healthy as a horse he admits he’s not as strong, quick or athletic as he once was. But he’s going to play ball.
Yep, last Monday his doctors cleared Gabe Allen to participate in his senior year of football. Which is another big part of what has proved to be a happy ending to a very scary story.
