Local Football Player Overcomes Rare Disorder

Watching Brad Weischedel play football, you'd never know that just months ago he could barely walk.

"Stuff as simple as putting my socks on, it hurt," Brad says. "It was really bad."

Brad first noticed something was wrong back in June while playing basketball.

"We started doing lay-ups and I couldn't even jump," he recalled

"At first, we didn't really know what was up," said Eric Guzak, Brad's teammate and the quarterback for the Mars football team. "We thought he was just sick. "

It turned out, Brad had Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body's immune system begins to attack one's own nervous system. It affects about one in 100,000 Americans and can lead to paralysis or even death.

"It was scary and overwhelming because they said it was so rare," Brad said.

Another one of his teammates, Seth Guyer, senior running back on the Mars team, was also worried. "We went to see him at the hospital, and you could tell he lost a lot of weight. He didn't look like himself."

"Some doctors," Brad said, "said it would take six months to get better. Some said I would never fully recover 100 percent."

If things weren't bad enough, doctors soon discovered a defect in Brad's heart, Aorta Bicuspid Defect. It threatened to end Brad's athletic career forever.

"We really we didn't think he would make it back," Brad's football coach Scott Heinauer said.

The good news came in August when Brad was out to dinner for his 18th birthday.

"My mom got a call from Dr. Aurora, my heart doctor, and said I would be able to play basketball and football. Best feeling. It was awesome," he said.