Last Edited: 9/1/2012 6:32:11 PM by Pataskala

Last Edited: 9/2/2012 12:05:01 PM by medler

Robert Fox General User Member Since: 11/16/2004 Location: Knoxville, TN Post Count: 330 Status: Offline

RE: Don't care for Bill O'Brien    Posted: 9/1/2012 6:57:03 PM  He comes across as a very unlikeable guy, almost like he's had things handed to him most of his life, and he doesn't deal well with adversity. Maybe that's not true, but he didn't handle himself well in this interview at all.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—The episodes come so often and so random, are so mind-numbing in their frequency, there’s never really an opportunity to reflect on the sheer terror of it all.

Multiple times every day, Jack O’Brien stops breathing.

When Bill O’Brien and Colleen O’Brien found out that their second son, Michael, did not have the same neurological disorder as their first-born, they were so grateful and relieved. (AP Photo)

“I’m always waiting,” Colleen O’Brien says. “Please take that breath. Take that breath.”

A breath of life, a breath of perspective.

“People ask me about pressure in this job,” says Bill O’Brien, Penn State’s new coach. “Really? Pressure?”

Here is Bill O’Brien’s view of pressure: His son, Jack, is 10 years old and has the rare neurological disorder Lissencephaly. He can’t walk or talk, can’t feed himself, can’t do things typical boys can do.

And he has seizures, sometimes 10 a day, and as many as thousands a year. From episodes that last seconds, to those that last minutes. All feel like hours, and every single one takes another piece of he and his wife Colleen’s punctured souls while they wait for their son—rigid and non-responsive—to eventually emerge from the place only he knows.

Last Edited: 9/3/2012 3:43:23 PM by perimeterpost