Fast action, mental and physical fortitude got Poky freshman Barfuss back on the field following pediatric stroke

POCATELLO — Conor Barfuss was sitting poolside at a hotel in St. George, Utah, last June when everything turned on its ear for the 13-year-old and his family.

It all started, according to his mother Marianne Barfuss, with Conor complaining of a headache. Concerned the heat of a summer afternoon was the culprit, Marianne tried to get her son to cool down. Conor was unable to verbalize it in the moment, but recalls hallucinating.

“After, it felt like an eternity but probably only a minute or two, I got him to look at me and his eyes — the pupils of his eyes were like a pin,” Marianne said.

“It was all so weird,” Conor added. “It happened so quick and there’s spotty — like, there’s stuff I don’t remember, some stuff I do remember.”

Marianne said that she was fully aware of strokes and their telltale signs, but that wasn’t what she was thinking. Still, she was concerned enough to rush Conor to urgent care. By the time the Barfuss family got to urgent care, Conor was unresponsive, and his face was beginning to “sag,” Marianne remembers.

Fast forward 15 months and Conor is a freshman at Pocatello High School, playing fall baseball with the Pocatello Outlaws and preparing for the winter, when he can get on his skis and attack whatever mountain he can find.

Following extensive tests, doctors determined that Conor had suffered a pediatric stroke. He was immediately transported to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. There, medical professionals were unable to find a cause that led to the stroke, determining that it was the result of dehydration and some sort of viral infection — like a cold.

Conor and his family had been in Utah for a baseball tournament, where he was playing with his American Legion Rebels team. The Barfuss family, Marianne explained, decided to turn the trip into a family weekend getaway. Now, they were at Primary Children’s, unsure what the immediate future held.

Conor, now 14, described being in the hospital as “very scary,” saying that the first few days there, he wasn’t fully aware of what was happening.

When he did return to a full state of awareness, he had been in the hospital for four or five days, and it was midweek.

Now alert, Conor began the rehab process. He “graduated” the speaking portion of the physical and occupational therapy quickly, but walking and fine motor functions were things doctors told Conor would take longer.

Before leaving Friday, Conor’s medical team told him he would likely be in the hospital for around three weeks, until he could show them he was capable to getting out of bed, getting ready for the day and walking around with limited assistance.

“I didn’t like that,” Conor said of the prognosis.

Conor’s family found a wheelchair in his room, so he got to work. His personal goal was to be back on the field for his baseball team’s last tournament, which was only a few weeks out.

With his family at his side — and directly behind him with a wheelchair in case he needed it — Conor started walking that weekend.

“Just watch. Watch me do this. I’m going to get out of this bed and do this,” Marianne said of her son’s thought process. “He was just cruising the halls, in his Aaron Judge shirt. … That whole weekend, we were all over the hospital, just walking, walking, walking.”

Barely a teenager, Conor was concerned his teammates would see his ailment as weakness. But that thought was put to rest when those very teammates showed up at the hospital that Sunday. The visit further invigorated Conor’s resolve.

“They brought me a case of Dr. Pepper and cupcakes,” Conor said through a bright smile.

Suddenly, Marianne continued, Conor was moving even harder. He learned that he was part of a team, a team that had his back.

“That one hit home for me,” Marianne said.

when his care team returned that Monday, he showed them that he could get himself out of bed and ready for the day, that he could walk with little to no assistance.

“I built a Lego set, that was hard,” Conor said.

He was released the following day.

When he returned to Pocatello, Conor quickly learned just how much of the baseball community “had his back.” He received gifts, visits and messages from dozens of people ready to support him.

“He got a lot of love and support from the baseball community,” Marianne said. “It was amazing.”

Two weeks later, he was back on the diamond. While he was relegated to cheerleading duty, he was able to sit in the dugout, with his teammates.

“I did get to sit through it,” he said. “I kept hoping I was going to play.”

Asked how it made her feel, watching her son back in uniform and in the dugout, Marianne held back tears.

“The thing that really tore me up was the first time he walked back on a field in general — probably three days after we got him out of the hospital, I took him to see his teammates,” she recalled. “He walked out … and he scooped up some dirt in his hands and was rubbing his hands in it. I was a wreck. That’s his happy place, he loves being out there.”

Conor finally did get back on the field last fall. The recovery process, first predicted to take months, was cut down drastically by Conor’s own effort, along with a physical therapist who tailored Conor’s rehab to his own goals — being a baseball player and skier.

Now, he is a freshman at Poky, and once again playing fall ball, having finished his travel ball season with the Rays 15U American Legion team. He finished the Legion season with a .318 batting average and .516 on-base percentage.

“It was a long recovery,” he said.

Asked if he will ever again take for granted his ability to play baseball or ski, Conor responded immediately: “No way.”

He doesn’t rule out trying to play baseball in college. But for now, his goal is to play varsity ball for coach Vinnie Benavidez and the Thunder.