Ford Fairlane
Moderator
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2002
- Posts
- 88,689
- Reaction score
- 227,786
- Location
- Port Adelaide 5015
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Port Adelaide Magpies
Eddy Cornes - Kane and Lucy's baby - has had a pretty tough start to life with a heart condition. Not good for him of course, and tough on his parents. I'm sure everyone wishes that everything turns out for the best.
Kane's son takes priority
Article from: The Advertiser
MICHELANGELO RUCCI
August 08, 2007 02:15am
SATURDAY, April 21: Kane Cornes leaves the MCG eager to get back to Adelaide, more so than his beachside home, preferring not to savour a significant victory against Collingwood.
This is extraordinary for any Port Adelaide footballer.
SCG, Sunday, May 20: The Power, then the AFL's surprising competition leader, has been defeated by Sydney. Cornes rushes out of the changerooms - leaving behind his team-mates - with some of the SCG grass not dislodged from his hair by a very quick shower.
Adelaide Airport, June 29: Cornes charges through the terminal alongside his older brother Chad. He picks up his Jetstar ticket to Brisbane with everyone noting he had his sternest "game-day face" for the following day's clash with the Lions on early.
Brownlow Medallist Simon Black, Cornes' opponent 32 hours later, would have appreciated the early warning.
The anecdotes go on from a still incomplete year in which one of the AFL's most dedicated - if not intense - footballers has been distracted, but not derailed. And for good reason, on both counts.
On September 6 last year - four days after the Power's season ended with an unsatisfactory 12th placing - Cornes' life was changed. He and his wife Lucy had their first child, son Eddy Jack.
But the usual story of AFL footballers who get a new perspective on life from fatherhood - and are deprived of much-needed sleep by crying babies - is far removed from this one.
Eddy Jack has endured an extraordinary start to his life with rare and complex heart anomalies. And every raced beat of Eddy's heart - that at times has pumped to 240 beats a minute - can stop Kane's.
It is worse when Cornes is out of Adelaide - and Eddy, as has happened five times this winter, is in a ward on the fourth floor of the Women's and Children's Hospital at North Adelaide.
"And the obvious question," says Cornes of his soul-searching, "is should I go? I feel guilty if I don't stay - and when I leave Lucy or her mother behind with Eddy in hospital I think it is not quite fair.
"I just want to be with Eddy all the time."
Eddy Jack is vibrant. It is easy to imagine that he would grow to be a big and strong key-position player in the AFL; a sensational father-son choice for the Power.
His smile is as infectious as his personality that is built on extraordinary courage. His big blue eyes sparkle to mask the so-far untold story.
"Look at him," says Cornes as Eddy eagerly manipulates a mobile telephone, "and you'd say he is physically healthy."
The greatest compliment of Eddy, adds Lucy, came when she stood in a queue at a department store and the man behind her said: "Gee, what a healthy looking boy."
The story is very different.
After 20 weeks of her pregnancy Lucy Cornes went through a routine scan at Ashford Hospital.
"When the doctor came back," said Lucy, "to say the scan showed Eddy's heart was on the wrong side (right) of his body, it was a major shock for us."
Added Cornes: "There was a knot in my stomach."
But the doctors expected Eddy to have no extraordinary health issues after birth. At just 10 days old, there was another scan - and another shock. Another cardiac problem - simplistically, in how the heart moved blood to Eddy's lungs.
There would be two operations - one exploratory, the other to shut off one of the two veins moving blood from the heart to the lungs.
And in between all this another heart issue, the rapid heart beat, emerged.
There have been five stays in hospital - up to five nights - this winter when Eddy's heart has beaten to a fast rhythm, often without explanation. And when Eddy is four, with his heart bigger and the risks smaller, he will have open-heart surgery in Melbourne to correct his heart anomaly.
Until then - and probably beyond - Cornes can be excused if in any interview he treats the notion of "courage" and "inspiration" in AFL football very differently.
He will say it is in his son's approach to life. "He copes with everything - everything - amazingly well," said Cornes. "Even when the doctors are prodding him, testing him, putting tubes in his arm . . .
"He never cries. He never complains. And when he is home and happy, I never take that for granted."
Cornes will add his perspective of life has also been changed by watching the dedication of Eddy's cardiologist Gavin Wheaton and the staff on the fourth floor of the Women's and Children's Hospital.
There is no asking by Kane or Lucy as to why Eddy's life has begun this way. "We were brought to it - we'll be brought through it," says Lucy. "And Eddy was born different to make a difference."
That difference - with the help of Cornes' public profile as an AFL footballer - is to be both physical and emotion. Eddy's story has inspired a charity to remodel the fourth floor of the Women's and Children's.
"There is a never-ending wish list for what can be done to make that hospital floor better," says Lucy.
And then there is the emotional encouragement to be offered to those who follow in Eddy's footsteps.
"By nature," admits Cornes, "I am stressed. No one is more stressed than me. And I never thought I'd have to deal with something like this. But I do. And Eddy does. And Lucy does.
"We feel fortunate that we are in a position to help others and repay the extraordinary children, parents and staff involved with the Women's and Children's."
