It was just an ordinary day last December for Mark Toothaker. He worked at Spendthrift Farm, went to the gym and settled in at home in Lexington, Kentucky, to watch the New York Giants play the New England Patriots on “Monday Night Football.”
He never expected what came next.
Watching from bed alongside his wife, Malory, who was reading a book, Giants kicker Younghoe Koo whiffed on a field goal attempt in a real-life scene reminiscent of Charlie Brown and Lucy in the “Peanuts” cartoon.
Rewinding and watching the replay, Toothaker laughed so hard it caused a seizure.
“I’ve never felt anything like this in my life,” Toothaker recalled. “I felt like I got electrocuted.”
Malory happens to be a nurse at a rehabilitation hospital working for a brain-injury doctor.
After initially thinking her husband was joking, she called 911 and paramedics arrived to get him to a hospital.
A CT scan revealed a tennis-ball-sized tumor on the left side of his brain. “When you hear the news, ‘You’ve got a brain tumor,’ that’s what nobody wants to hear,” Malory said.
Toothaker was transferred to the University of Kentucky’s hospital, where the tumor was surgically removed and turned out to be benign.
He was home by the end of the week with no lasting damage. On Saturday, he will be at the Churchill Downs as Spendthrift Farm-owned Further Ado is set to run in the Kentucky Derby.
Toothaker is thankful for that missed kick.
“(The) kicker saved my life because it could’ve happened any other time,” Toothaker told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “I wholeheartedly believe I was in the right spot at the right time, and he was the trigger for that happening. It was a miracle.”
Toothaker, 59, had no symptoms and no idea the tumor had moved his brain 6 millimeters to the right.
In the months before his seizure, he had driven and flown all over the country as part of his job as stallion season manager, including the previous Saturday to Louisville to see Further Ado win the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes.
“I could have had it on a plane, anywhere,” Toothaker said. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t run over a family in my Expedition running up and down the road. I guess that would’ve been the hardest thing for me to live with if somebody would’ve got hurt out of this.
“Believe me, as tough as that thing was, as violent as that seizure was, I have no memory of it and I would find it hard to believe that I wouldn’t have hurt somebody or hurt myself if I would’ve been behind a wheel.”
Toothaker made it a point to watch because he has been friends with then-Giants receiver Wan’Dale Robinson’s dad, Dale, for a long time. Robinson went on to become the first player 5-foot-8 or shorter to surpass 1,000 yards receiving since 1989 and got a lucrative contract from the Tennessee Titans.
Toothaker said he would love for the 31-year-old Koo — once the most accurate kicker in league history — to be his guest at the Derby, recognizing that the miss is not exactly a career highlight. Koo, who was released two weeks after the game, did not respond to messages from AP for this story.
“I know it wasn’t his best moment, but it was beyond crazy,” Toothaker said. “For she and I to be belly-laughing at his expense, which I feel terrible about now, but it all worked out in the end, that for me it couldn’t have been a better moment.”
Malory Toothaker said things are very normal for her husband now.
“So many people aren’t that fortunate,” she said. “Really the first indication that he had a problem was the seizure — and to be in your own bed at home, not behind the wheel of a car or traveling. You’re just so humbled and feel so blessed and just fortunate that if this had to happen, it was the best-case scenario.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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