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Teen athlete sidelined by brain abscess
Kyle Burns helped Wheeler High School win two state basketball championships, but his college basketball career got off to a rocky start, when a sinus infection spread to his brain.
MARIETTA, Ga. - For Kyle Burns of Marietta, basketball has been a centering force throughout his nearly 20 years of living.
"I'm free on the court," Burns says. "It's just like therapy, honestly."
The 2022 Wheeler High School graduate helped his team win two state championship titles, earning a scholarship to play for Radford University in Virginia.
Kyle Burns, 19, was sidelined by a severe brain infection caused by sinusitis. (FOX 5 Atlanta)
That is where Burns started a training camp the summer after he graduated.
"The workouts and stuff were going well, and then, I just started getting sick," he remembers.
He had a sinus infection he could not seem to shake.
"July [went by], and then August," he says. "That's when I was like, 'Okay, I'm really sick.'"
While home in Georgia for a friend's funeral, Burns developed a crippling headache.
"It was just like something that I never felt before," he says.
He missed the funeral and ended up in the emergency department at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
Dr. Barun Brahma, a Children's Healthcare pediatric neurosurgeon, says Kyle had developed a brain abscess.
"It was just a bad infection, a really bad infection, that was able to transmit from his sinuses into his brain," Brahma says.
This type of abscess is rare.
"You have to have an anatomic anomaly, an abnormality in your anatomy, to actually have it," Dr. Brahma says. "So, most people would not develop this from sinusitis."
Burns' immune system had formed a thick wall of scar tissue around the pocket of infection.
Kyle Burns, 19, of Marietta, has returned to playing basketball at Radford University after being sidelined by a sinus infection that spread to his brain, requiring three surgeries.
Dr. Brahma says the abscess was now pushing his brain from one side of his skull to the other.
"He was still awake and talking to us, and things like that," he says. "But, the second day after he was here in the hospital, he got sleepier and looked a lot worse."
Burns would undergo three brain surgeries, the first an emergency procedure to drain the abscess.
"But, over time, that [fluid] re-collected," Brahma says. "So, we had to do a bigger operation to take off the bone and open up the covering tissue and really, really get the abscess out. After that second operation, he looked tremendously better."
There was one more operation in January 2023.
Then, Burns began intense physical therapy at Children's, trying to regain the strength and mobility he had lost.
He says he thought a lot about basketball, about his team.
Kyle Burns, 19, of Marietta, has returned to playing basketball at Radford University after being sidelined by a sinus infection that spread to his brain, requiring three surgeries.
"I was really, honestly, like, I was itching to play the whole time," he says.
Getting back on the court took time.
He started out shooting baskets alone.
"I got to play on the court, I just didn't get to compete on the court; I couldn't play against anyone," Burns says. "As time went by, like, I started to say, 'Okay, I can start dunking now. Okay, I can shoot a little deeper now.'"
Kyle Burns, 19, of Marietta, has returned to playing basketball at Radford University after being sidelined by a sinus infection that spread to his brain, requiring three surgeries.
Last fall, Burns rejoined his team at Radford.
He had been away from playing competitively for a year.
"My first game back, I had 14 points," Burns smiles.
And today, his ordeal is behind him.
"I'm great, and I'm way more grateful now, just of my everyday life," Burns says. "I'm just grateful to be breathing, honestly."