Team Effort

Together, John Jackson Jr. and Torrance Memorial stroke specialists take it to the end zone.

Written by John Ferrari | Photographed by Michael Neveux

You know where you stand in football. First and 10. Fourth quarter, 17-14, John (JJ) Jackson Jr.—All-Pac-10 USC receiver and 1989 team MVP, two-time Academic All-American, wide receiver for the Phoenix Cardinals and Chicago Bears—always knew where he stood … until the day he couldn’t. When that day came, Torrance Memorial’s team players helped him stand back up in the longest, most challenging contest he’s ever won.

That day was December 4, 2018. John and his wife, Ann, were at the gym. “We had a routine where we’d go work out in the morning,” he recalls. “That’s the irony: I was working out to prevent strokes or anything. All of a sudden I started feeling a little out of sorts.”

John chalked it up to dehydration. Ann wasn’t so sure and suspected a stroke. The two took an ambulance to Torrance Memorial’s Melanie and Richard Lundquist Emergency Department (ED), where Ann’s suspicion was confirmed: John had suffered a massive stroke to the right side of his brain.

In 2018, the hospital was working toward its Comprehensive Stroke Center certification (which it received in January 2020), and all the pieces were in place to call in special teams: neurointensivist Brian Sherman, MD, and stroke specialists at Cedars-Sinai, brought in via the TeleStroke videoconferencing system, along with Torrance Memorial ED nurses and physicians.

“We’re part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System,” Dr. Sherman explains. Using TeleStroke, “Cedars-Sinai specialists can cover multiple hospitals. Having that system in place is the backbone of providing immediate high-level care like teleneurology. It allows us to start this whole process off, in conjunction with our emergency room staff. Because Torrance Memorial is a comprehensive brain center, we do a lot more than strokes and have a specialized neurointensive care unit. We’re able to give the highest level of stroke care. When somebody comes in for a stroke, Cedars-Sinai TeleStroke doctors get involved quickly, because decisions have to be made on the type of treatment quickly.”

“The technology was amazing,” Ann says of TeleStroke, which allows doctors in a remote location to have a virtual presence in the ED. Together, Dr. Sherman and the team at Torrance Memorial's Lundquist Neurosciences Institute, collaborating with the Cedars-Sinai specialists, decided the play: John needed a thrombectomy—the insertion of a catheter to remove a blood clot from his brain.

If Dr. Sherman was the quarterback, Ann was the coach—confirming the calls. “Every procedure they did, they informed me of the possibilities,” she remembers. “There was amazing communication. I appreciated that.”

That’s part of Torrance Memorial’s playbook, Dr. Sherman says. “The most important thing is the family and the physician and the medical team are all a part of the team together and we’re doing this together. I am there to provide guidance on the best options and recommendations, but only the family knows their loved one best.”

The procedure was successful, but they hadn’t scored a touchdown. John’s brain was swelling, the same way your finger swells after you accidentally hit it with a hammer. But with John’s brain surrounded by his skull, there was no room for his brain to expand, and instead pressure built up. Hours after the thrombectomy, his condition began to worsen rapidly.

“I was the attending physician,” Dr. Sherman explains. “As the primary critical care intensivist, your responsibility is to be able to assist your colleagues who initially diagnosed and removed the clot, but also to get a sense and a feel for the patient—understanding their ups and downs as they are in the ICU. As the primary physician in the ICU, you have to have the pulse of the situation—literally. With him it was about anticipation and being proactive.”

As soon as Dr. Sherman noticed John becoming sleepy—common enough in postoperative patients—he worried about swelling. A CAT scan revealed a “curtain of swelling” moving across John’s brain. Without surgical intervention, John had only hours to live.

“Now the only option is to remove half of his skull,” Dr. Sherman continues. “That gives you room to allow the brain to swell. You have to coordinate a massive team: get the OR ready and, meanwhile in the ICU, get specialized medication that reduces the swelling and buys you enough time to get the OR ready.”

At this point, neurosurgeon Bob Shafa, MD, took the ball, performing the surgery. At Torrance Memorial, he says, “Our model is to be extremely aggressive with treatment—especially in cases of young patients,” such as John. Thanks to the initial treatment, and the quick diagnosis of swelling, “We had that initial window of timing, and when he started to deteriorate, time was of the essence for us.”

Like Dr. Sherman, Dr. Shafa brought the family into the huddle. “We try to connect with them and try to help them in making these very difficult decisions,” he says. “My philosophy is to treat them as your own family, and then you know in your heart the right decision.”

John was in a coma for two weeks after the emergency surgery, with a section of his skull tucked neatly into his abdomen to keep it alive until it was safe to replace it. “Then there’s always that one day when all of a sudden you see a flicker of hope,” Dr. Sherman says. “You see a flicker of an eye.”

John came out of his coma, but he wasn’t in the fourth quarter yet. He had months and years of recovery ahead of him.

“I can remember the recovery stage,” John recalls. “Dr. Shafa would come by the room and ask how I was doing. I couldn’t wait to say hello. Seeing the doctor that saved your life, that’s really important.”

Once out of immediate danger, John moved from Torrance Memorial’s neurological intensive care unit to transitional care, and there was rehab, Ann recalls, “before, during and after. When he first started, he couldn’t even hold his head up.”

Every day, John had occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy. “It’s like being a baby,” John explains. And it’s tough. “You have to make it through those tough times because they definitely will come. Nothing can prepare you, and it’s not easy.”

But John’s a team player, and in addition to his family he had a team of supporting players in transitional care. “All of the people you’re dealing with are great. You start to develop relationships like they’re your brother or sister.” He spent three months in bed, but by the time he left in mid-April (with his skull back in place), he was using a walker.

Dr. Sherman did a lot to get John—and his family—to that point. And it’s about more than just medicine, he explains. “I want them to feel in control every day. That’s a service we can offer at Torrance Memorial: We invest and spend time with patients and their families. That’s what’s required—it’s where the truth of the oath that you’ve taken as a physician lives. You’ve got to be side-by-side with the family. There’s a lot of coaching that goes along with this. John’s an athlete, so he knows what it’s like to have a coach. Even the best have to have a coach.”

After he left Torrance Memorial in April, John spent almost a month at a local transitional rehab center, “and the focus every day, all day, was rehab,” Ann says. Once he was back at home, he returned to Torrance Memorial three times a week for physical, occupational and speech therapy.

In the year since then, that’s been reduced to less than once a week. “Even when I go to the hospital now, it’s like seeing your sister you haven’t seen in a long time,” he says. “It’s still a great feeling for me to go back to the hospital. That’s one of the highlights since I’ve been out: keeping an eye out for people who cared for me.”

There was still something puzzling John, Ann and the team at Torrance Memorial, though. Why did a relatively young, athletic man like John have a stroke at all? Cardiologists at the Torrance Memorial Lundquist Lurie Cardiovascular Institute “discovered a hole in my heart that could allow a blood clot to pass through and get to my brain,” John explains.

While his medical team is monitoring that condition, John continues to recover from his stroke. Like any lifelong athlete, he has set himself some powerful goals with his family and his alma mater. A second-generation Trojan (his father, John Sr., was a USC football running back coach and offensive coordinator), until his stroke John was a football commentator on the USC Trojans Radio Network.

In 2019 his son, John Jackson III, was starting his freshman year as a wide receiver at USC. “That was my long-term goal while I was in the hospital,” John says. “To watch him come out of the tunnel at USC at a game.” On August 31, 2019, as the Trojans took the field at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for their first game of the season, John was back in the broadcast booth. “To be able to watch my son do that was a dream come true.”

Now John is looking ahead to his next goals. “My daughter is a very good soccer player, going into her senior year of high school, and has committed to USC,” he says. “My goal now is to be able to watch her play soccer in a USC uniform and be able to talk about her in my broadcast. And USC has been wanting me to get back. I couldn’t have had a better combination than Torrance Memorial and USC, and my 9-to-5 job at First American Title Insurance Company, looking out for me and wanting to take care of my health. I have a hospital and two jobs that have been caring and looking out for my best interests. My anticipation is to go back to broadcasting in the fall, and USC has been supportive of that. I think I’m on track; I just have to keep on getting stronger.”

He continues, “Through all of this, the Torrance Memorial doctors went above and beyond the call of duty in doing their job. In developing relationships, they were caring and thoughtful. It’s almost like they knew what you were going through, mentally and physically. I couldn’t have had a better combination of doctors, nurses and therapists to get me to where I am today. I couldn’t be more thankful.”