It will be some time before the Guelph Storm coach/general manager will be back behind the team’s bench as he recovers from serious back surgery.
“I have a doctor’s appointment March 1 and if I feel better before then, I might try and get down to the office and be around and try and help out a little bit,” Brooks said Wednesday from a bed transplanted to the living room of his Listowel-area home.
“But as far as how long it is before I can coach again or be back on the ice? That definitely won’t be until I have that (March 1) appointment.”
Brooks had spinal fusion surgery Jan. 12 in Toronto. The seven-hour procedure saw four vertebrae in his lower back fused together using metal rods, eight screws on each side, plus some of his own crushed-up bone from his damaged spine that was then encased in metal cages and used in the repair.
Doctors also removed scar tissue from nerves, the residue of two back surgeries Brooks had in 2007 to repair a fractured vertebrae.
He talks regularly with assistant coach Chris Hajt, who is handling the team in Brooks’s absence.
“I give him my best two cents as much as I can, but it’s up to him how much he uses it,” Brooks said.
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