Inside a fourth-floor room of OHSU's neurology wing, a poster board rested across from a patient's bed.
On it were pictures, dozens of them, of Bryan Black, 32, wearing basketball jerseys. The first came from Eastern Washington. Another from Ohio State. Portland. Valparaiso. On and on.
As recently as March, he didn't have any of them. But since he began his quest to own a jersey from all 350 NCAA Division I teams -- to help raise awareness for the epilepsy that's plagued him since 2012 -- they've arrived in droves to his Monmouth home.
"This one was pretty awesome," Black said, holding a jersey of his alma mater, Oregon. "That was my first Pac-12 school. I was going to build up with the smaller league schools before the SEC and the Pac-12. But I have to show my allegiance to where I'm from."
Across from the board laid Black. He wasn't wearing a jersey that June afternoon. Instead he was in a hospital gown, in a hospital bed underneath a quilt patched with the logos of some of his favorite sports teams -- Oregon, the Texas Rangers and Dallas Mavericks.
On his head, Black wore what looked like a white windsock hooked up to a nearby machine. It confused his 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old twin boys the previous night on a FaceTime call.
"Does your brain hurt?" one of the twins asked. "Is your white hat making your brain get better?"
Black hopes so.
As his wife, Keygan, sat sifting through health and resource information, they spent that day waiting. It was his third day in the hospital and he was off his medications and doctors kept him sleep-deprived in hopes of inducing a large seizure that would locate the origin of the epilepsy in his brain.
He was nervous.
"You don't know if you're going to wake up," he said. "Will everything be the same, or will I be a completely different person?"
Before epilepsy, Black dreamed of collecting jerseys on a school-to-school nationwide driving tour. He loves basketball, and always has. But in the past nine years, as the seizures arrived and then worsened, the game's place in his life has taken on deeper meaning. Seizures have disrupted his life completely, keeping him from jobs and his family. What they haven't severed, however, is his connection to the game that both excites and soothes him. During the college season from November to April, he's noticed a decrease in seizures. The jerseys act as a tangible connection to the sport. They're also a positive distraction from day-to-day worries. Perhaps most improbably, they've become an unlikely channel for spreading his story nationwide.
In March he sent emails to schools detailing his situation.
He hoped then that maybe, just maybe, a few of the schools could help him out.
BROKEN DREAMS
Bryan Black sifts through jerseys stored at his father's home in Monmouth, Oregon.
Black wasn't coordinated enough growing up to play basketball. He blames high-functioning autism that he was later diagnosed with. But even sidelined, his fascination with the game never dimmed.
He arrived at Oregon in 2003 and joined Phi Kappa Psi, hoping to pick up social cues from his peers. Basketball was popular amongst some of the guys in the frat and Black found it as a way to develop friendships. He pored over rules, teams and players. Soon he would impress friends with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the sport.
"He would know all the players on every team," said Ian Howard, a fraternity brother. "He knew who they were, what their stats were. He knew things about colleges around the country and parts of Virginia (Howard's home state) that not even I knew."
Black's room at the frat became basketball central. He invested in the DirecTV multi-sport package. The first few weeks of March were his favorite, when the smaller conference tournaments were broadcast. Three separate feeds would play at once in his room.
"That was my favorite reality TV," Black said. "The players on the smaller schools work their butts off and you can tell how much it means to them."
Black studied geography at Oregon and dreamt of one day driving to each of the 350 campuses he had memorized.
Black's cross-country dreams began to fade in 2008, the year of his first seizure. He remembers driving and not being able to think coherently. At the time, he thought it was a headache or perhaps too much caffeine. It came and went.
In 2010, Black and Keygan met online, setting up their first face-to-face meeting on Nov. 10. Black said that was the day he knew he found his wife. She was kind, funny and understanding of some of his self-described awkward social ticks. They both deeply wanted to start a family. They married in August 2012 and their daughter, Arya, was born nine months later.
Not even a month into their marriage, though, Keygan saved Black's life when he suffered his first massive seizure. Black doesn't remember much from the actual event, other than it happened the day after Kenjon Barner rushed for 201 yards and three touchdowns as the Ducks and a redshirt freshman quarterback named Marcus Mariota defeated Fresno State, 42-25.
When Black began to shake in bed, Keygan knew to flip him onto his stomach in order to decrease the chance of him choking on his tongue.
There have been consistent seizures ever since. He hasn't been able to keep a full-time job since his diagnosis, saying seizures became too distracting in the workplace. He's not allowed to drive and requires monitoring nearly 24 hours a day. He's limited now to part-time work online.
It's created a complicated family situation. With three kids and limited work, the Blacks were evicted from their apartment in October of 2016. Now Keygan and the kids share an apartment with a friend in Independence while Black stays two miles away in Monmouth with his father, who can monitor Black most of the time. Black's epilepsy makes him unable to watch the kids on his own.
"When I have issues, my daughter asks if my brain hurts," Black said. "She'll ask me if I need a brain break.
"Derrick will come up and pat me on the back and he just turned 2. Marcus just likes to play with his cars."
Before Black fired off the emails to the different basketball programs this spring, he said he'd reached a pretty dark place. Outside of basketball season, his seizures were becoming more problematic. He and Keygan are hoping to get an apartment soon to finally have the whole family under one roof, but money continues to be an issue. Attending events like this November's PK 80 basketball tournament in Portland, which features many of college basketball's premier teams, are an afterthought.
Black eventually had the big seizure OHSU doctors were hoping for in June, one that caused him to start counting and speaking in Finnish -- a language he had studied in college. The eventual results, however, were inconclusive.
He'll have to return later this summer for a more invasive procedure, where holes will be drilled into his head as neurologists continue to search for the localization of the seizures.
He hates needles.
"At first this didn't seem all that debilitating, but I've become more worried and resigned to the fact that I can't control this," he said. "I want to find whatever I can to keep myself and family and kids as positive as possible."
LEAVING A LEGACY
College basketball super fan Bryan Black has collected over 80 NCAA Division I basketball jerseys. Photo by Sean Meagher/Staff
Black's story, months after landing in inboxes at athletic departments across the country, now has reached a wider audience. Since he returned from the hospital, several outlets from across the country have shared the story of his burgeoning jersey collection, and its meaning for Black and his family.
Hung on a coat rack at Black's home, the jerseys are filed in alphabetical order, by conference. The number has now surpassed 100.
"This is really cool," Black said in June, rummaging through a box in Monmouth, pulling out cards and pictures and notes sent along with the jerseys. Thad Matta sent a personalized note -- just days before Ohio State fired him as coach. Another note Black pulled out came from Providence head coach Dan Hurley.
"When I read your story I couldn't help but feel your passion and emotional connection to the game," Hurley wrote. "You are an inspiration to me and college basketball fans alike."
He even got a personalized Twitter message from new Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing, who said a jersey is on its way.
"It's not just about basketball," Black said. "It's about these universities and the scientific endeavors they promote. I hope this can help promote the science of the brain and other neurological issues."
In a perfect world, Black hopes his next hospital stay will be the one that sets up surgery. If they can peg where the seizures are originating, brain surgery could be on the horizon toward winter. He'd like to have all 350 Division I jerseys by then. More importantly, he would really like to be cured before the twins have lasting memories of his health problems. The jerseys are mementos, but his family is something more.
"They're my legacy," Black said.
-- Tyson Alger
talger@oregonian.com
@tysonalger