“My injury helped shape my perspective on who I am and helped me process the gifts I’ve been given. I’m so blessed to come out of this stronger.”
Carlos “C.J.” Gurulé, Jr. had missed the first two weeks of varsity football practice because of a broken thumb. Once healed, the coaches at Avon Lake High School made him a rotation player for the JV and varsity teams to get him back in football shape.
On September 18, 2021, in the third quarter of a morning JV game, C.J. took a few quick steps up the field then cut sharply across at a 45-degree angle. While making a tackle, C.J. was hit from behind and fell.
He thought the intense pain in his right calf was cramps. As he rolled over to pick his leg up, pushing on the back of his knee, he saw that the long bones in the lower leg connecting the knee and ankle were pressing against stretched skin. His calf appeared bent, hanging down.
C.J. immediately thought he’d never walk again.
A trainer from the opposing team rushed over to put C.J.’s leg in an air cast. His mom, Leigh-Ann, removed his helmet. His dad helped coaches lift him up onto a stretcher.
As paramedics carried C.J. off the field, one of his coaches told him to wave. It would calm the crowd in the stands and let everyone know he was alive. So, he waved.
The paramedics asked Leigh-Ann if she wanted to go to the Level III trauma center about 1 mile away. If the injury turned out to be serious, C.J. would be transferred to MetroHealth Medical Center, a Level I trauma center 12 miles away.
Let’s go straight to MetroHealth, she said.
C.J. arrived at MetroHealth’s Emergency Department around noon. Leigh-Ann and Carlos watched while the ED staff cut away C.J.’s football equipment, including the cleat on his badly swollen right foot. The only thing spared was his No. 28 jersey.
After X-rays and tests, a diagnosis: a complex tibia/fibula fracture (broken shin and calf bones). C.J. would need surgery that day.
First, under twilight anesthesia, doctors realigned the bones in his leg. Afterwards, C.J. met Nicholas Romeo, DO, an orthopedic surgeon at MetroHealth since 2017.
Leigh-Ann remembers Dr. Romeo being direct but empathetic. C.J.’s injury was not uncommon, he told them. He offered them two options:
- Skip surgery and wear a cast and brace while letting his leg heal naturally. Or,
- Intramedullary nail (IM nail) surgery for the tibia, a procedure Dr. Romeo and his colleagues performed regularly. The recovery time would be about six months.
C.J. told Dr. Romeo he wanted to play football during his senior year in high school. And he had dreams of playing college baseball.
Dr. Romeo assured C.J. that not only would he walk again, he’d play competitive sports again.
During surgery, Dr. Romeo implanted a titanium rod in the tibia from knee to ankle, securing it with four screws.
After two nights at MetroHealth, C.J. went home on September 20. He returned two weeks later – a few days before his 17th birthday – for his first follow-up visit with Dr. Romeo, who removed the soft cast and bandaging.
The initial shock of seeing C.J.’s leg gave way to amazement.
“It was incredible,” Leigh-Ann said. “We were just like, ‘Wow. You fixed his leg.’ It was crazy.”
Fitted with a walking boot, C.J. was instructed to not put any weight on his leg. A few days later, he returned to school using a walker. After a couple weeks, he switched to crutches.
On November 1, six weeks after surgery, C.J. took his first steps while Dr. Romeo watched.
“That was a really weird feeling,” he said. “I had to learn to walk and use my lower body all over again.”
Dr. Romeo gave orders for C.J. to start putting weight on his leg again. He also cleared C.J. for physical therapy twice a week.
In late January, C.J. stepped onto an indoor pitcher’s mound and started throwing baseballs.
In March, at his 6-month follow-up appointment, C.J. passed several physical tests and showed he could walk unaided. Dr. Romeo gave the OK to start preparing for the baseball season and, later, take part in summer football workouts.
Leigh-Ann started waking C.J. up every morning at 5 a.m. First, sprint workouts to knock out C.J.’s limp. Then running in the neighborhood and at an athletic training facility nearby.
C.J.’s first scrimmage, as a relief pitcher, was on March 22. He only pitched 12 innings in regular play that season to give his body time to recover.
In June, C.J. started training for his final high school football season while also playing summer baseball full-time.
C.J. started in 13 varsity football games during his senior year. The following spring, he was named to the all-district, all-county, all-conference baseball teams and was voted top pitcher in Northeast Ohio by Cleveland.com.
In August 2023, C.J. enrolled at Lake Erie College in Painesville on a baseball scholarship. Despite securing the nominations needed to apply to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Military academies, C.J. settled on Lake Erie College. It would be a better fit for his love of baseball and preparing for medical school.
Because of the care he received at MetroHealth, and the impact of what he called Dr. Romeo’s mix of confidence and caring, C.J. wants to become an orthopedic surgeon.
“After this happened and everything he went through, he was locked in,” Leigh-Ann says. “C.J. watched the [Intramedullary nail] surgery on YouTube a hundred times. He said, ‘This is my calling. This is what God wants me to do.”
Today, C.J. is a junior, on track to graduate in 2027 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Based on his academic record, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida (Dr. Romeo’s alma mater) already has reserved a space for him.
“Dr. Romeo and his team – the entire MetroHealth staff – filled me with a lot of confidence that I’d recover. Because of that, I want to be able to give that same confidence to someone else.
“My injury helped shape my perspective on who I am and helped me process the gifts I’ve been given. I’m so blessed to come out of this stronger.”
