INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Healthy. A picture of health. Maybe, healthy as a horse. That’s what people might say looking at Christopher Flaig. At 16, Chris is big. He weighs 266 pounds and stands 6 feet 5 inches tall. He wants to get bigger, much bigger.
A junior, he plays three positions on the St. Edward’s School varsity football team – offensive tackle, defensive end and long snapper.
Big-time college football programs are interested in him: Miami, Navy, Florida Atlantic University, FSU, UCF, Alabama and Florida.
In fact, he spent last weekend in South Bend, Ind., touring the Notre Dame campus, attending an alumni dinner and meeting the school’s athletic director.
But this isn’t a sports story. It’s the story of a teen with epilepsy, who got it under control and now wants to kick up the level of people’s awareness about the condition.
He planned one event this week and another in February to start that effort.
Eventually, he said, he wants people to know as much about epilepsy as do about breast cancer.
Chris said he started getting epileptic seizures when he was in the second grade and – for nearly five years – he suffered about three seizures a day, small ones that lasted 2-3 minutes and generally involved disorientation.
Sometimes at night, he experienced grand mal seizures. Those seizures typically involve loss of consciousness and sudden muscle contractions, causing the person to fall down.
The muscles then go into rhythmic contractions, alternately flexing and relaxing. The incidents usually last for a couple of minutes.
Following a grand mal, Chris said, he’d wake up in hospital, often denying he even had one.
Tests at Miami Children’s Hospital indicated he was a good candidate for brain surgery to combat the seizures, but his doctor advised the family to wait.
He finally underwent the surgery in May 2007 as a sixth-grade student at St. Ed’s.
The surgery is a two-part procedure.
The first step would open up his right temporal lobe so doctors could diagram it. The second part would come only after Chris suffered a seizure, which doctors needed to pinpoint the problem area in his brain.
“It was actually remarkable,” said Chris. “During the first surgery, they recognized exactly what was wrong. There was undeveloped tissue in the right temporal lobe.”
Doctors didn’t need to wait for a seizure.
They removed 25 percent of Chris’ right lobe, the part of the brain linked to a person’s visual memory.
With no need for the second operation, Chris was home within four days.
He later went back to school and took his end-of-the-year tests.
“I wanted to go back to school,” he said, adding he was bored with recuperation at home.
Asked if he was nervous prior to the surgery, Chris shook his head.
“I was mad when they wanted me to wait to have the surgery,” he said.
The seizures hindered his performance at school and he wanted to put that life behind him.
“Still, you never can be totally not afraid.”
Chris’ mother, Cynthia Flaig, a Realtor with Weichert Realtors on Country Club Drive, was not so matter of fact.
She started to talk, shot a glance at Chris and tears welled up, even 4 1/2 years after the operation.
“I consider him my miracle child,” said Flaig, who also has two more sons, 14 and 25. “He works harder than anyone I know. And he still overcomes the side effects of his medication. I’m always amazed by him.”
Within months, Chris was playing middle-school football.
“I haven’t had a seizure in a long time,” said Chris.
“He was ready to go right after surgery,” Flaig said. “The fact he plays football? I sit in the stands and can’t believe where we are.”
Chris said a lot of parents thought his mother was crazy to let him play football, but the doctor didn’t see it that way.
Flaig knows football is a tough sport, but relies on the advice of Chris’ doctors.
“Christopher’s surgeon explained to me that he is in no more danger than any other player on the football field,” she said. “As long as he has a helmet on, he is fine. He looked so forward to playing and as long as the doctors cleared him I had to give it a shot for him. He was so determined to play football, how could I hold him back?”
Still, Flaig said the first time she sat in the stands at St. Edward’s to watch him play middle school football she did think to herself “What are we doing here?”
“About the same time, another football mother came up to me and told him how brave I was to allow him to play,” Flaig said. “My reply was that I never had any control before over his seizure disorder and him playing football only a few months after surgery was no different. I was trusting the doctors who cleared him and God to protect him. Chris enjoyed it so much and had no medical reason for him not to play.”
Football, she said, has been great for Chris both mentally and physically.
“During the years of his recurring seizures, he lost confidence in himself,” she said. “Chris is truly someone who has overcome his circumstances.”
No longer the budding football player, Chris is big and formidable now, but he wants to increase his size and his performance.
“I want to be at least 300 plus,” he said of his weight.
He is training with speed coach Dallas Norwood and a strength coach who is a former Marine drill instructor.
Despite the interest from all the colleges, he’s not sure where he wants to go to school.
College, he said, won’t just be about football.
“I want to be a doctor. I’m interested in orthopedics and neurology.”
He also turned his attention to getting the word out about epilepsy.
He said he thought he had it bad until he went to a camp for children with epilepsy.
“I want to say I have it real good,” he said.
Chris recently attended the Denver Broncos-Miami Dolphins game and noted the extensive attention given to breast cancer awareness.
He’d like to bring that type of attention to epilepsy.
According to statistics, about 39,500 people will died from breast cancer this year.
The National Epilepsy Foundation projects that this year another 200,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with epilepsy and an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 will die of seizures and related causes, non-stop seizures, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, drowning and other accidents.
Chris’ first event was a Mulligan’s Beach House Bar and Grill at 1025 Beachland Blvd., on Thursday, where the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida had an information booth, facing painting and balloons.
The restaurant donated 10 percent of the proceeds to the foundation.
Chris is also working with Brooke and Erica Beverly to hold a walk to raise epilepsy awareness Feb. 11 at Riverside Park.