It was a Google search that first revealed the diagnosis that would forever change Dan Oosterhous' life.
The Air Force men's tennis coach was 42, a pilot with 20 years of active duty service to his credit and capable of beating half the players on his roster. But when he awoke at 2 a.m. in early March 2013, the lingering discomfort he'd felt in his neck for a few weeks had escalated into a throbbing cramp.
He thought he'd sleep it off, but when he awoke five hours later the symptoms had worsened. It didn't feel like the flu, or any headache he had experienced, so he began typing the symptoms into his computer.
He had weakness, vomiting, nausea, dizziness and had lost the feeling in his right side to the point where he couldn't walk.
About 795,000 in the United States suffer a stroke each year. On that day, Oosterhous, the picture of health, joined that group.
That attack proved to be mild. The lost feeling returned with about two weeks of rehab.
Three weeks later when those symptoms returned - again in the middle of the night - he knew what to do.
"I called 911. The fire station was right next door. I was sitting on my doorstep and they asked what was wrong, I was like, 'Well, I'm having a stroke,'" Oosterhous said. "I'm talking to them and everything is fine, so they're like, 'How do you know?' I was like, 'Well, I've had this before. This is my second one, it's not that bad.'"
It was, in fact, bad. And it grew worse. Over the next 20 hours, a rogue blood clot that had lodged in Oosterhous' brain stem robbed him of the use of his left side.
He survived because, in random fashion, the stroke didn't touch the cells that control his breathing or his heartbeat.
He has since thrived because, while half of his motor function was devastated, his internal motor was left in pristine condition.
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Words didn't used to matter to Oosterhous, the coach.
If he saw something in practice that needed correction, he would jump in and demonstrate the proper technique.
If he had to pinpoint a change in his style in the two years since his strokes, it's all in the vocabulary.
"I have to be more creative with my words and make pictures for them verbally," Oosterhous said. "I just demonstrate things with my mouth vs. with my body."
His players, however, would point out a different change.
"He started bringing that attitude to practice every day of just not letting anything get you down," said captain Grant Taylor, the team's lone senior and only player to have played a full season under Oosterhous before the stroke. "In tennis it's easy to get frustrated about little things. You make a mistake and you get mad - that sort of stuff. He really focuses on staying positive and it forces us to look at the big picture in how we react to things."
Oosterhous believes it's this outlook that helped the Falcons post a 7-2 record through the nonconference season despite losing four seniors from last year. That start included the team's fourth victory in five matches against Army over the past six years when it pulled off a 4-3 thriller March 15.
When it comes to coaching this sort of attitude, Oosterhous remains the master of leading by example.
On the fourth day after the second stroke, he began an online journal. It began as a way of keeping his family informed of his progress, since talking at that point was a painful process that led to tongue cramps. So he wrote every day and kept doing so for a year and half.
The first entries weren't of recovery goals or even lament over his condition. They were of acceptance.
"I wrote that there's nothing to be upset about, this is nobody's fault," Oosterhous said. "It's not my fault, it could have happened to anybody. It happened to me, so what am I going to do about it? I can choose to be bitter, or I can try to get better. So that's what I'm going to do."
A visit on the day after the stroke by then-athletic director Hans Mueh helped put Oosterhous' mind at ease. Mueh assured him that his position as Air Force's tennis coach was his as long as he wanted it. His job for now, however, was to focus on recovery.
Once cells in the brain stem die, they don't regenerate. The tasks once assigned to them are forever lost, replaced only if a different set of cells can learn to perform the function. So Oosterhous' recovery has focused on compensating for his physical deficiencies rather than trying in vain to reanimate parts of his body - like his lower left leg - that simply aren't receiving instructions from his brain.
His recovery brought back memories for the 1993 academy graduate. The initial phase, when it all seemed so physically overwhelming, took him back to basic training (though with nicer instructors, he wrote). The process of learning a new skill and immediately being expected to apply it - everything down to putting on a sock - reminded him of pilot training where a lesson in takeoff and landing on one day was expected to be not only retained, but performed, the next.
"It was kind of cool to be able to look back and say that because of my experiences here I've been through something tough," Oosterhous said. "And I could make it through it."
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Two arteries run from the heart next to the vertebrae in the neck and into the brain.
Somehow, Oosterhous damaged one of them. He doesn't know exactly how it happened, and neurosurgeons have told him they are usually injured only in traumatic events like car accidents or skiing falls.
He recalls a tennis match a few weeks before the first stroke in which he became worked up and left with what felt like a strain in a neck muscle. That could have been the problem. It could have occurred elsewhere. Oosterhous hasn't spent much effort trying to recreate what went wrong, as he sees little use in looking back.
When the interior lining of the artery was damaged, his body naturally tried to fix it with a sort of internal scab. When it broke loose it lodged itself in the brain stem, cutting off the blood supply for a small area. The diameter of the damage was far greater the second time.
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The Air Force gave Oosterhous a medical retirement about 17 months after his strokes.
This process, in its cold reality, is a bit like an insurance company deciding to total a car.
A board reviewed his condition, his medications, his service time and his potential for recovery within a certain amount of time. Oosterhous believes if he had been a second-year lieutenant that perhaps a different decision would have been reached.
He had flown more than 3,100 hours as an instructor pilot and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
"That was fine," he said. "I understood that. I lost my pilot rating and my commission, but it was a medical retirement. I'm not bitter about it at all, that's just what happens."
He said the military health benefits have been critical in his recovery, as has been access to facilities and medical personnel at the academy.
Oosterhous, who had spent his final five years on active duty as Air Force's tennis coach, has kept the same job but works as a civilian.
His former assistant Jeff Nevolo, now a women's assistant at South Carolina, handled the team while Oosterhous was recovering, including all travel for recruiting for about a year. Tennis recruiting isn't anything like basketball or football, with only about six trips per year.
Oosterhous, who can travel without limitations now, again handles recruiting and attends all matches.
Assistant Evan Urbina was hired in late 2014 and was aware of Oosterhous' condition when accepting the job. He said nothing is different in the coaches' roles with the Falcons compared to what he experienced on staffs at Florida State and BYU.
"My view of the head coach is kind of like a CEO of a business, and at the places I've been the assistant is more the one hitting with the guys," Urbina said. "So, to me, it just feels normal."
Oosterhous' 56 victories at No. 1 singles rank fifth on Air Force's all-time career list and as a senior he went 22-3, posting the fourth-best season winning percentage for a No.?1 player in program history.
As coach, he helped the Falcons achieve their highest national ranking at No. 63 in 2014. The Falcons also climbed out of last place in the Mountain West, no small task considering this international sport has players from 25 countries on the Mountain West's other seven teams. Air Force, of course, has players from only the U.S.
Oosterhous replaced his former coach, the 36-year mainstay Rich Gugat, and he may well stick in the position that long. In fact, part of the brunt of losing his military career was lessened by the fact that he may have been retiring soon anyway. He had been here long enough that a military move was likely in his near future, and as a single dad of Emma (18, a freshman at CU-Boulder), Anna (16, who attends Air Academy) and Andrew (14, an eighth-grader at Eagleview) he didn't want to leave behind either his job as tennis coach or his kids, whose mother, Allison, lives in Colorado Springs.
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Just as Oosterhous once marked off a dreaded checklist of symptoms online, he is now checking off a list of accomplishments.
A major early goal was to play soccer with Andrew, and he can do that now. Anna plays tennis for the Kadets, and he can hit with her.
He recently jogged all the way around Air Force's indoor track - which covers one-sixth of a mile - for the first time.
In the early stages of his recovery he played tennis in a wheelchair, but has since ditched the chair. His movement is limited, but leave the ball where he can get it with his forehand and you are reminded that the half of him not impacted by the stroke retains the abilities of an elite athlete.
"It's absolutely inspiring," Taylor said. "Seeing someone like that and knowing what he was like before, then seeing him go through this and coming back from that, it's incredible."
His feats have even included a trip to England to participate in the Invictus Games, the brainchild of Prince Harry that was sort of a beefed-up version of the locally competed Warrior Games. The Invictus Games included injured and disabled veterans from 14 coalition countries. Oosterhous threw the shot put and discus and competed in cycling and swimming.
Swimming has been a highlight of his recovery, with the water being the one place that affords him total freedom of movement. Of course, navigating in a straight line is problematic with one side propelling him, but he has learned to adjust.
That ability to cherish small things without concerning himself with the difficulty pretty well sums up Oosterhous' recovery, his outlook and, in all likelihood, his future.
"My strokes will be a permanent part of my life," he wrote in a journal entry, "but they won't define me."
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©2015 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
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