As a young pro, Rockford’s greatest golfer ran into a series of nagging injuries. Later, he began to hurt even when he wasn’t injured.
“In my late 20s, I used to run a couple of miles a day, but I started to notice some difficulty in recovering from workouts and golf,” Brad Benjamin said. “I thought my body was slowly wearing down.”
That wasn’t it. It was probably the same thing that made his mouth taste metallic several years later.
“I had my wife buy me new toothpaste,” Benjamin said. “I couldn’t figure it out. I could tell something was up, but it wasn’t alarming.”
It became alarming over Thanksgiving week in 2022. Benjamin, who now lives in South Carolina, his wife and their two young kids were back in the Rockford area visiting her parents when he began getting migraine headaches. Also at that time, a spot in his left eye grew much worse. He visited an optometrist, who noticed pressure behind the eye that caused bruising. His blood pressure was over 200. He was sent to the hospital for more tests.