CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Freddie Kitchens backstory showed up again on Monday.

It's a narrative that worked its way into his press conferences over the final eight weeks of the 2018 season. It includes a Dr. Benjamin E. Mays quote about how those who start behind in the game of life must run faster to catch up. "I have been running fast my whole life," Kitchens said.

It includes a section about how Kitchens "did not have a goal to be a head coach. I had the goal to be the best coach that I can be." And how Kitchens always assumed that "if you do your job well enough, you will get recognized."

All of this helps to make up the Freddie Kitchens story that Browns fans embraced over the last few months and into Monday, when he was introduced as the newest Browns head coach.

But you don't always get to choose how your story goes. Kitchens learned that in early June of 2013. That's when Kitchens, unsure of what was happening to his body during an Arizona Cardinals practice, turned to quarterback Carson Palmer and asked, "What does a heart attack feel like?"

Kitchens wasn't having a heart attack. But the popping noise he felt and heard in his chest, combined with numbness and the vision problems he was suddenly having, meant something was wrong.

A trainer took his vitals, expecting to see a high heart rate, but all the vitals were very low. After some arguing on Kitchens' part ("Just give me some IV fluids."), he was transported to a nearby hospital emergency room, where doctors performed a CAT scan and had worried faces. That's when Kitchens knew it was serious.

The scan revealed that Kitchens had an aortic dissection. The main blood vessel coming out of Kitchens' heart was torn internally. It hadn't ruptured fully through the aorta (that would've been fatal), but, as was later pointed out to him, a large number of people don't even survive long enough to make it to a hospital. The mortality rate for such a condition is 80 percent.

Doctors were afraid to move him. Phone calls were made trying to find a thoracic surgeon so Kitchens could undergo surgery then and there.

"Every beat of the heart was a flip of the coin," Kitchens told NFL Network.

Kitchens had to be airlifted to Phoenix for emergency surgery. But the ride wasn't filled with uncertainty and fear. It was filled with photos. Kitchens had always wanted to take a helicopter ride with his daughters, so he documented his trip so they would see what it was like.

"He's so outside the box, thinking of everybody except himself," Palmer told NFL Films.

The surgery lasted 10 hours. Kitchens never thought he wasn't going to wake up, even though his surgeon, Dr. Andrew Goldstein, told NFL.com that "It was about as big of an operation as this type of thing could require." The procedure involved replacing Kitchens' heart valve and the torn aorta.

As Kitchens recovered, he cherished the time he was able to spend with his wife, Ginger. But when training camp rolled around, Kitchens was back to the grind as Cardinals' quarterback coach.

If you're looking for a life-altering, I'll-be-a-different-person-now narrative here, you won't find it. Kitchens noted on Monday that the ordeal taught him the impact he had on other people, and, as he wrote in a Christmas day essay on SI.com, he's now more likely to tell his family that he loves them, or others close to him that he appreciates them.

But beyond that, Kitchens believes he has always respected life and tried to live every day to the fullest. He's never been one to think too far ahead. At Monday's press conference, Kitchens explained how he was going to do the best job he could during the press conference, then he and GM John Dorsey would focus on doing the best they could filling out the coaching staff.

"Then we are going to go to sleep," Kitchens said with a smile.

One step at a time. One day at a time. It's a sports cliché, but it's the way Kitchens lives. It's his story, he can do what he wants. "You're kind of like the author to your own story," Kitchens told NFL Films after his surgery, "and this is just part of my story now."

Here, in 2019, as Browns head coach, he begins a new chapter.

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