BILLINGS — Sleep-deprived and frantic, Kara Dudley felt it was time to go into mother tiger mode.
Her son, Cooper, was lying in a German hospital bed about 24 hours after surgery to repair a compound fracture of both the tibia and fibula just above the ankle, and though the operation was considered a success, Kara felt something wasn’t right.
Kara had arrived in Germany a few hours prior following a long journey from Whitefish after she learned her son had been seriously injured in a basketball game. During her initial visit with her son, after being told Cooper's stay should be relatively short, his repaired right leg continued to swell to grotesque proportions and he was in a considerable amount of pain.
No overnight doctors were on staff at the hospital, so it was only through serendipity that Kara decided to take her son’s fate in her hands.
It was 3 a.m. in Germany when Kara received a text from a friend, who said an orthopedic surgeon from Denver was visiting her. Would Kara like to talk to him? Of course, she said.
Still at the hospital, Kara detailed the operation to him, sent images of the X-rays, and described what her son was currently experiencing.
While the American orthopedist felt doctors had done well on the surgery, he had a dire warning. He suspected Cooper was suffering from compartment syndrome, a condition where pressure inside the muscle restricts blood flow, oxygen and nutrients, creating potentially serious consequences.
“You don’t have hours to wait,” he told Kara. “You need to find somebody immediately.”
Kara hung up the phone, Googled “compartment syndrome,” and didn’t like what she saw. Cooper could be in danger of losing his leg, or even worse, if he didn’t get attention soon.
She went to the nurse’s station for help, repeatedly asking for a doctor and repeatedly being told there wasn't one available. Kara kept pressing the issue, and eventually a nurse agreed to call one in.
When the doctor arrived, he examined Cooper’s leg and immediately disconnected the bed from all the medical apparatus and wheeled him down to surgery.
“It was just that intense,” Kara said.
What followed were three more surgeries in the next three weeks, leaving Cooper with a 14-inch scar on his right calf, and required a skin graft from his right thigh to help seal that opening. In all, Cooper needed a 22-day stay in the hospital from July 6 to July 28. He lost nearly 30 pounds from his 6-foot-3 frame.
Cooper had gone to Germany with his AAU basketball team, comprised of players from the Flathead Valley, to play a series of games and get a taste of the international game.
In the third game of the scheduled seven-game tour, Cooper slid into the lane to provide help defense on an opposing player driving to the hoop. The other player tried a slow Eurostep move to try and get around Cooper, but the player’s first step landed on both of Cooper’s feet, basically staking him to the floor.
The offensive player’s second step stomped on the inside of Cooper’s right ankle, and the bones snapped in half. The jagged bones didn’t penetrate the skin, but you could see them poking hard against it, Cooper said.
“I was in a lot of pain,” he said, “but I was like, at first, it was just shock. It almost felt like I blacked out. And then I knew something was wrong.”
Cooper’s AAU coach called Kara back home in Whitefish, told her the situation and that Cooper was being taken by ambulance to a hospital. In a matter of hours, Kara was on a flight from Whitefish to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Stuttgart, Germany.
By the time she got to the hospital, two plates and 13 screws had been inserted into Cooper’s lower right leg.
Upon release from the hospital, the prognosis for Cooper’s return to the Whitefish Bulldogs high school basketball team was in doubt. He averaged 11.3 points per game as a sophomore during the 2024-25 season, shooting 38% from the 3-point line, and had been eagerly looking forward to his junior year.
But as of homecoming weekend — Sept. 26 — he was just starting to walk without crutches after graduating from a wheelchair. That seemed to be a turning point for Cooper.
“Probably from the end of September till November, that was the most progress per week,” he said. “I started walking quicker, and then a little bit after that I could start jogging. It just got way better within that month and a half. It was nice seeing actual progress.”
Even before he could walk unaided, though, he was shooting baskets. His friends would wheel him out to the hoop at the family house, and Cooper would shoot from his chair. When he was eventually able to stand, he shot baskets putting weight only on his left leg.
Cooper faithfully did his physical therapy, pushing himself even further than recommended, he said. Pain control was still a big problem, so the family sought functional medicine remedies such as laser and light therapy, peptides to reduce inflammation, and ketamine infusions to reduce pain.
The Dudleys tried everything to keep Cooper off oxycodone or other pain killers, which didn’t seem to be helping anyway, Kara said.
Both Kara and Cooper attributed his fast progress to keeping the pain under control.
But there’s still a long way to go. Cooper said he can feel the plates and screws in is leg and Kara said all that hardware is covering his growth plates, so there is still discussion to be had on whether it should be removed at some point. He still deals with a lot of pain, though it’s not close to what it used to be, Cooper said.
As for basketball, Cooper returned to the Bulldogs much earlier than expected. Though he’s on minutes limitations, he played in Whitefish’s first four games before sitting out a fifth before the Christmas break due to soreness.
Cooper said he hasn’t regained his old ability to create shots for himself or others yet and placed his recovery at maybe 70 or 75%. The long-term goal is to be completely healthy by the time his senior season rolls around.
For now, he’s just happy to be on the court.
“Things could always be worse,” Cooper replied when asked what he’s learned through his ordeal. “I could have lost my leg. So, I mean, always be grateful. Don’t take anything for granted, because everything can change in one moment.
"But also, I had to realize, like, basketball isn't really my only personality trait. It's not my only purpose, and I had to kind of wake up and realize that there's other things to me than that. Also just that you can, with the right people and right mindset, you can get through anything."
Kara said messages of support flowed in from throughout the Flathead Valley and that she’s even heard from people she met in Germany while waiting for Cooper to get better.
Friends, she said, have told her that they might not have been able to be the advocate she was for her son, given the circumstances. Feeling alone, in a foreign country, uncertain of what to do.
Trust me, Kara tells them, you would.
Like her son, Kara is simply happy to see him playing basketball again.
“I know how difficult it's been to get to this point,” she said. “And I'm so proud of him for just pushing and working and not taking no for an answer, because this is what he wants.”
Early on, Cooper told Bulldogs coach Landon Henderson that he’d be able to play the first game of the season. Even though Cooper showed up every time to open gym, twice a week throughout the fall, shooting those one-legged 3-pointers off by himself for 90 minutes in the morning and another session in the afternoon, Henderson didn’t believe him.
Yet, sure enough, Cooper was cleared to play by the opening of the season, albeit on a limited basis.
“It's just inspiring, like it just pulls us together, closer as a team, because he fought that hard to be back with us,” said Henderson, who is in his first season as the Whitefish head coach after being the junior varsity coach for two seasons. “He didn't have to. He could have taken the year off. Nobody would have blamed him. Nobody would have judged him.”
Taking the year off wasn’t an option for Cooper, who loves basketball and hopes to play in college. That’s just the bulldog in him, it seems. In Kara, too.
