St. Charles woman loses her "sunshine"
Listen to the interview with Sheila McCormick here
By James Fuller
When Mark McCormick was 2 years old, his family caught him on tape singing his favorite song, "You Are My Sunshine." His mother, Sheila, thought it was so good that she mailed the tape to her sister in England.
That song would later become intrinsically tied to McCormick's identity, but not before tragedy would strike.
McCormick was only 24 years old when it happened. He'd had a headache he just couldn't shake for at least a week when he sat down for dinner with his pizza parlor boss at a restaurant in Arlington Heights. McCormick went to the men's room. While there, he blacked out. McCormick fell, smacking his head on the tile floor.
The result was a traumatic brain injury, making McCormick one of the 1.4 million Americans a year who suffer similar blows to the head.
Most victims are treated and released from hospitals. In McCormick's case, he'd never be the same again. The former track star at Niles West High School awoke to a life in an assisted care facility. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He had no memory of what happened.
That was the condition Mark McCormick was in when his relationship with his mother evolved. Sheila and Homer McCormick put their lives in Indiana behind them and moved to St. Charles to be close to Mark. They visited him daily, a routine that only increased for Sheila when her husband died.
She would arrive at Pine View Care Center every day at about 11 a.m. to perform Mark's therapy with him and have lunch. Then she'd tuck her son in for a nap and return around 5 p.m. for dinner and some time outside before she'd kiss him goodbye for the night.
Eventually, Mark McCormick learned to walk and talk again. He'd have some good days when he'd walk full hallways with a chair, but other days he'd just sleep. He was never the Mark of old.
"Some days I'd get there and we'd start with a 'Hi, mom'," Sheila McCormick recalled. "Other days it would be, 'Who are you?' "
Even 20 years later, Mark McCormick's mind was stuck. He still believed he lived in a Skokie apartment and worked at a pizza parlor.
The daily care he needed was expensive. It out-priced the family's insurance, Medicaid and savings. So the family created an annual fundraiser, a run in St. Charles that hearkened back to Mark McCormick's track days. It started with just 80 or so runners and grew into more than 400, providing up to $6,000 to help with medical bills.
But none of it helped with the emotional taxes the loss levied. Sheila McCormick would often sleep in fear of the telephone. Late night calls always meant Mark had suffered a seizure. Those calls usually came at 2 or 3 a.m., up to six times a year. Sheila would leave the warmth of her bed and trek into the night to her son's bedside to hold his hand while he calmed down.
The next day, the therapy would begin again. And Sheila would be there, looking for the son she remembered, but living with the impaired version he'd become.
And then that tape he made as a 2-year-old boy resurfaced.
"One day I brought that tape, put in on and said, 'This is you,' " Sheila McCormick said. "And he sang along. He remembered every word. So everyday we'd put that on. The girls there would come in and say, 'Who's my sunshine?' "
Mark would simply reply, "Me."
Last Saturday, Sheila McCormick received another one of those dreaded phone calls. Only this time, it wasn't just to let her know Mark was having a seizure.
"They just said, 'Sheila, get over here.' "
She was five minutes too late when she arrived. Mark McCormick died at the age of 44 having lived for 20 years with a brain injury he never fully recovered from.
There are currently 5.3 million Americans living with some level of disability as the result of similar brain injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control. There are even more family members dealing with their own trauma as they care for their loved one.
The chances of recovery are somewhat unpredictable and vary according to the severity of the injury, said Dr. Keith D'Souza, associate medical director of the Brain Injury Program at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton. The impact to the victim depends on what areas of the brain are injured and the ability of other parts of the brain to assume those mental functions. Younger people with no history of drug use have the best chances for recovery. But there are no hard rules that will tell how well or how quickly someone will recover, if at all, D'Souza said.
"With a brain injury we generally tell families they can expect a loved one to recover over a period of up to two years," D'Souza said. "That's 90 percent of the recovery. That 90 percent will be different from person to person. It may just be moving a hand. For another person that may be being able to walk. Some may progress, plateau, then progress again. It does make it very hard on families."
D'Souza said the unpredictable nature of recovery can result in up to 15 years of emotional distress and family problems for people associated with a victim. That's why there are multiple support groups and peer mentoring programs for such families at hospitals around the country.
For Sheila McCormick, her therapy will be moving back to Indiana to be with her daughter and granddaughter. This year's Mark McCormick Milers Fox River Run will be the last. It will serve as a tribute.
"I thought we'd all be together again," Sheila McCormick said of her move to Indiana. She'd planned the move even before Mark died, setting up his transfer to another care facility.
"Now he's going back in a different way," McCormick said. "He's up there now. He's running and happy again."
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