Kedrick Sosenheimer missed only one Komets game this season - until Monday, when the 8-year-old underwent four hours of brain surgery at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital.

During every game of the playoffs, the Fort Wayne boy had longed to watch the Komets win the Turner Cup. It was a tough break for him to miss Monday's big game, so his parents, Rick and Heather Sosenheimer, took the Komets to Kedrick.

“We got all the Komets paraphernalia we could think of and took it to the hospital and decorated his room,” Heather Sosenheimer said. Doctors and nurses popped in to find out why Kedrick's room was blazing orange.

“They wanted to know about the Komets,” Heather Sosenheimer said. And Kedrick had lots to tell them about the team while showing off his signed poster of Komets center Matt Reynolds, pictures of himself with team mascot Icy, orange pompoms and even a hockey puck. “I had put most of it aside to have framed for (his) room, but I grabbed it - and I mean all of it,” she said - and one little boy's hospital room was transformed into Komets World.

The Sosenheimers had known Kedrick, who attends Haley Elementary School, would need another brain surgery - this was his eighth - to correct complications from a rare condition called Arnold-Chiari malformation. Heather and younger brother Hunter, 7, also have the genetic brain condition, and the oldest of the Sosenheimers' three boys, Drake, 9, has cysts in his brain plus several birth defects. Arnold-Chiari pushes the cerebellum downward onto the brainstem, creating headaches, numbness, muscle weakness and vision problems.

Kedrick also has pseudotumor, a condition in which his brain functions as if a tumor existed, although none does. In a protective measure, his body produces excess spinal fluid, so Kedrick, who also has been diagnosed with a heart murmur and autism, has an internal shunt that drains fluid into his abdomen. The couple broke the news to Kedrick about his surgery Friday morning.

The only consolation was that friends had arranged stage-side tickets for the family at the Rascal Flatts concert at Memorial Coliseum later that day. Flatts is the boys' favorite country-music act, and they know all the group's songs, Sosenheimer said.

No matter how sick he is, Kedrick's enthusiasm for hockey, particularly the Komets, never wanes, Sosenheimer said.

He and his brothers count Komets mascot Icy as one of their best buds. Icy has attended fundraisers for the family, and a week ago, the boys delivered a Komets birthday cake to Reynolds, their favorite player. The cake was made and decorated by their mom.

The Sosenheimer boys' Web site - part of the CaringBridge network in which chronically ill children or adults can post messages - is peppered with notes such as, “Let's go Komets! Eat Orange, Wear Orange.”

On Monday night, while Kedrick rested in the intensive care unit, sedated and unaware of what would be the Komets' fifth Turner Cup, his parents, along with some of the hospital staff, watched the game on a laptop computer. A baby sitter took Drake and Hunter to the game.

Kedrick will likely remain in intensive care at Comer for several more days before going to his orange Komets room. When he is awake again and feeling better, one of the first things he'll see is his Icy doll. Then he'll want a blow-by-blow report of the Komets' win, she said.

“I think every nurse and doctor in the ICU now knows the Komets and just what ‘Welcome to the Jungle' means,” Sosenheimer said, recalling the last thing her son said to his neurosurgeon, Dr. David Frim, before surgery started: “‘It's not just hockey. It's Komets Hockey!'”