Taylor Lawless was in pain.
This, unfortunately, was hardly news.
For the last four years, if it hasn’t been one thing, it has been another. If it wasn’t her dad Bud’s unexpected death, it was the money problems that created.
If it wasn’t her need to leave Fenwick when she would have liked to stay, it was the two knee injuries she suffered playing for Wheeling, the second of which will wipe out her senior season.
“You kind of just have to grow up fast,” she said, summarizing her tale of woe.
Lawless was propped on a couch in her family’s living room Thursday, her right leg sticking straight out in a brace the size of Montana, her knee still sore from surgery three days earlier to repair it.
She had hurt the knee June 12 but hadn’t had surgery then for a reason too many millions of Americans know too well: She did not have health insurance coverage.
Lawless’ life once seemed as simple as school and sports. Powered by Bud’s dreams and her own love of basketball, she had pursued it since 2nd grade, often with him as her coach.
Bud was a complete gym rat, playing hoops whenever and wherever he could. The man was in great shape.
Who would have believed Arthur “Bud” Lawless would drop dead of a heart attack at 44 in the middle of a game in September 2002?
Bud always wanted Taylor to attend Fenwick, where her cousin, Erin Lawless, was a star. She enrolled a year after he died but only lasted a few weeks because the train and bus commute from Wheeling to Oak Park meant at least 12-hour days, even without basketball.
She transferred to Wheeling and immediately established herself as one of the area’s top young players. The following June, however, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament during a summer league game at Maine West.
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It was a partial tear, which meant Taylor could have surgery and sit out six months or do intense rehabilitation and play with a brace.
She chose the latter, although she really didn’t have much choice. Her family’s health insurance policy had been tied to the small building company her father owned, and by spring of 2003 the coverage was gone.
No policy, Taylor’s mom, Sue, said, meant a lack of money for an expensive knee operation, especially because Bud had died with woefully inadequate life insurance coverage.
“We were kind of dodging the bullet and hoping nothing bad happened,” Sue said of her daughter’s situation.
The 6-foot-1-inch forward played her next two seasons with the brace and played well enough to be a Tribune All-State special mention pick both times. But last June, in the same gym in the same league, Taylor aggravated the injury–even with the brace–when an opponent ran into her from behind.
Surgery was the only realistic option, but Sue said she still couldn’t afford health insurance. She had been a stay-at-home mom and was working part-time as a hairdresser while depending mainly on Bud’s Social Security benefits to support her, Taylor and younger brother Reese.
Someone suggested a possible way to get the operation for free, but Taylor couldn’t have used the surgeon who had been treating her.
Another possibility was Illinois’ new All Kids program, which provides state-subsidized children’s health insurance. Sue had applied for the program, which would begin July 1, but their coverage hadn’t started yet.
Taylor wanted the best possible surgical outcome so she would be ready to play college basketball as a freshman. She and her mom decided to wait to have the operation until she got All Kids coverage and the surgeon of her choice.
“I wanted her to be ready to play in college,” Sue said. “She had worked her whole life to play in college.”
In August, Taylor committed to Illinois State, one of the schools that stayed committed to her after the second injury. She will sign a letter of intent Nov. 8.
Last Monday, the day after returning from her official visit to Illinois State, she had arthroscopic knee surgery at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. She faces six months of rehabilitation.
Had Taylor undergone surgery in June, she might have been back on the court by January, a reality not lost on her.
“It absolutely stinks to sit out now,” she said of her lost season. “I won’t even be able to warm up.”
Wheeling coach Shelly Wiegel isn’t thrilled about it either.
“I’m very disappointed, first of all, that Taylor got hurt and, second of all, that she will miss her senior year,” Wiegel said. “But I’m happy she got surgery, and she will do good things in college.”
Sue Lawless, meanwhile, has turned into a self-described nag, practically ordering any wife she meets to make sure she knows what her family’s life insurance coverage is and to make sure it’s enough.
She tells them how she accepted Bud’s assurances they were OK and discovered too late that his insurance agents had begged him to increase his coverage.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we have the last four years,” said Sue, who had pressed Bud on the issue two weeks before he died. “It’s my mistake. I should have picked up the phone and asked the agent what kind of coverage we had and if it was enough.
“If I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”
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