Chargers’ Miller grateful for 2nd chance

Ryan Miller remembers the walk from his truck to the Browns training-camp facility, remembers attending a meeting, and next waking up in a hospital, neck in a brace, arms strapped to a bed. He jerked left and right, tore off the restraints and clawed at his neck, the nurse in the corner gawking at the 6-foot-7, 335-pound lineman.

Out of breath, head pounding, Miller spotted a Browns athletic trainer in the room. A familiar face.

His panic attack calmed. The pounding didn’t for weeks.

Miller made a decision last year, choosing to continue his NFL career after a 2013 concussion. This month marked a milestone in the effort. The guard impressed at a workout with the Chargers, was added to their practice squad and last week promoted. He’s on an active roster for the first time since the injury.

None of it, he takes for granted.

“God saw it fit where I could continue playing,” Miller said. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity. I learned the hard way you have to make the most of them when they come because you don’t know. I woke up that morning in a hospital bed, and that’s what I remember.”

He remembers the recovery, too.

The 25-year-old grew up in open space.

While raised in Littleton, Colo., the Millers had property outside Glenwood Springs. Father and sons would go on overnight trips, Miller bringing nothing but a tarp to sleep in for the 5-mile hike in above mile-high elevation. He could build fire with the bow-drill technique. He could purify water. In nature, food is everywhere for someone who knows where to find it. He could.

Miller does not fashion himself a survivalist. But out there, in the open air, shoot, if he had to, he believes he could survive.

To him, as much as anyone, weeks in a hotel room was time spent in a dungeon.

Miller had to barricade himself, he said, following the July 27 concussion. He suffered the brain injury early in training camp when a teammate knocked him to the ground, a hit so perfect — Miller’s word — that Miller’s chinstrap unbuckled and his helmet slid up his forehead.

The towering lineman landed on the angled back of his own helmet, jarring his brain and knocking him unconscious. He was prescribed rest in a dark hotel room.

Achy shoulders get iced. Balky backs get massaged. For bad brains, the remedy resembles solitary confinement.

He was sensitive to light, so he avoided the outdoors. He was sensitive to sound, so the television stayed off. Not since waking up in the hospital, strapped down for testing, had the headaches subsided. He could barely carry a conversation on the phone; bless his wife, Ania, then his fiancée, for her patience — she was his rock. The Makrinoses, a family he met through a gun range, also were there for him, even though they didn’t have to be.

Frustrated and bitter over the situation, Miller admittedly was not good company.

“I don’t like to be kept in a cage, in a room,” he said. “I need to move. I need to be free.”

Each morning, a maid knocked on his door, the thump, thump doing cannonballs in his brain. He yelled the service away, the pounding worse for it. Then, there was the light sensitivity.

“If anybody’s ever been on vacation and stayed in a hotel room, you know that there’s that slit between the blinds when you close them, and the sun shines through,” Miller said. “However many miles away that thing is, it still has perfect aim. It hits you right in the face, wherever you are.

“That was the worst. It was all dark except one streak of light. I don’t know why that was so sensitive to me. I needed to have complete dark or glowing, not the sun shining in. It was like a beacon.”

Miller spent three to four weeks, he said, entirely in the room.

The 2012 fifth-round pick never played for the Browns again and was released with an injury settlement. He and Ania had long, emotional conversations about his NFL future. He gave retirement thought. He could work security or protect people in some other way.

They prayed, and he kept playing.

Miller worked himself into shape and earned a futures contract last December with the Broncos. He spent training camp with them and was waived in August, moving on and off the practice squad from there.

He is San Diego now. On the active roster, he’ll earn a game-day paycheck for the second straight week. He basked Thursday in the glow of 88 degrees on the practice field. Yes, he was grateful on Thanksgiving Day.

“I’m still waiting to wake up from this awesome dream,” he said.

Miller used to curse sunlight.

Not anymore.