West Virginia daily

Both are offspring of bigtime, longtime WVU supporters--Sean's ("JrWVDihard" on this forum) Dad (the original "WVDihard") has had a rooting interest in all things Gold and Blue since growing up in Wheeling some 47 years ago. The VanSickles are Mountaineer clan for just about as long.

The ribbon running through the VanSickle household in West Virginia and the Garrisons' down in the Tidewater goes back at least through the grandparents on each side.

They also share something else--Zach is a regular visitor to the Ruby Memorial Hospital pediatric care clinic where he has a rare bone disease treated about every other week; Sean is just now feeling 100 percent after a collapsed lung put him in the Morgantown medical center's bed for 19 days.

They both attended the Pitt game Thanksgiving night, in part because of the athletic program at WVU, which, if it did not underwrite the tickets--as in Zach's case--certainly delivered Sean from his darkest hour.

"The West Virginia athletes see their faces when they come to visit them, but I really don't know if they understand how much of a boost it gives these young people, just to know they're coming," said Ruby registered nurse (RN) Robin Horwath, who dealt with both.

It was Pat Garrison who put out the SOS for his son on the premium board and was rewarded by a special visit by Mountaineer footballers Mike Lorello, Jay Henry and Dan Mozes, hoopster Mike Gansey and WVU quarterbacks coach/special teams coordinator Bill Stewart who came to see his son.

Another member of the forum, Todd King, proprietor of The Sports Page bar and grill in downtown Morgantown (he goes by a similar moniker on the Blue Lot), tipped off the WVSports.com staff about VanSickle and a much younger patient to help write this story.

King was notified by his fiancee' Amy Bland, a nursing assistant who makes rotations on the pediatric ward at Ruby, of the pair, one of whom is suffering from the bone disorder and the other who has a brain tumor. In turn, Amy also negotiated with RN Horwath about getting those two to the Backyard Brawl.

Logistics were continuing at the time of this writing but WVU football staff member Herb Hand made certain that both of the young men currently under Horwath's care would be supplied with tickets and parking.

"I don't know whether I'll be able to yell as much in eighteen-degree weather as maybe I did at the Louisville game, but I'll be pounding my hands," Sean Garrison said before the big game.

It was screaming in the final 20 minutes of the U of L conquest that Sean thinks collapsed his lung, which led to two surgeries and nearly three weeks in the hospital, buoyed by the visits of Lorello, Henry, Mozes, Gansey and Stewart.

Garrison suffered the long malady as he was walking up the stairs of the pressbox side of Milan Puskar Stadium after the Cardinal game, and made his way first to a generator room, where he asked for the facility's emergency medical service team to come, and then was rushed to the hospital across the way--this amid the cacophony of noise, people and traffic after the Mountaineers' comeback win.

"At first they were going to send me on to my grandparents (in Wheeling, where he and girlfriend Stephany Peace had planned to go). I said, 'Uh-uh, I think there's something wrong with me'," Sean recollected.

At the EMS room on site, Sean said technicians hooked him up to a heart monitor to check his vitals "but they couldn't hear anything in the left lung."

Upon arriving at the emergency room, the diagnosis was made. He had his girlfriend and his aunt with him and parents Pat and Linda, who were at a funeral in Richmond, Va., were on the way.

What followed then was a series of torturous tests and one major surgery and another followup, as Linda Garrison remained by her son's side until he came home on Nov. 4. Rick, a retired Navy officer, came up on the key dates when his son was undergoing the knife.

In the first surgery, physicians cut away a piece of Sean's lung, spread his ribs apart to expand his breathing apparatus and then literally sandpapered his breathing organ.

The tubes had to be reworked a second time, and when that happened, Lorello, Mozes and Henry were there "to watch them dress it. That was fun," Sean said.

Sean had carried into the hospital with him a nerf gun that shot soft pellets, and he said the gridiron heroes became ensconced with the toy pistol. "They lit up Dan with those little disks, shooting them all over the place," the patient said.

"I don't drive, but Travis does. And we'll go together. I don't know how many others will be with us, it just depends on how many tickets we will get," he said.

Unlike Garrison, this will be the first game for both of the Bruceton Mills young men. Zach said his favorite all-time play in a Mountaineer game came several years ago when a long pass to John Pennington put a game out of reach by the end of the first half.

Perhaps VanSickle's hunting buddy grandfather will join in for Thursday's fun. Zach said he had an uncle who lived in Pittsburgh, "but we'll leave him home because he's a big Pitt fan," he said with a laugh.

VanSickle has many more visits to the clinic before the blood disease, which is clotting his lung, can be solved. Garrison has sat out school at Chesapeake Hickory, but will return to class after the Thanksgiving holiday. He has been homeschooled since the surgeries and hopes to attend WVU one day.

Thankfully for him, the other stuff is behind him, with a big tip of the cap to nurse Horwath, Coach Hand and a big heaping helping of West Virginia Sports Dot Com love.

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