My family came to say goodbye... I was about to die
Two years after meningitis horror, South Africa dynamo Schalk Burger is back and eyeing glory
SCHALK BURGER is a picture of health with tanned skin, rippling muscles and surfer-boy blond hair, a stark contrast to the image he paints of himself as a disease- ravaged bag of bones for whom every breath felt like a stab to the brain.
Wife Michele summoned family to his Cape Town hospital bedside to bid their final goodbyes as Burger appeared to be succumbing to bacterial meningitis, an infection which had attacked his brain and spinal cord.
She did not expect he would survive the coming hours, let alone recover and rebuild himself to become an integral part of South Africa’s World Cup squad barely two years later. The 32-year- old was heavily medicated and has only hazy memories of the days he spent on the brink of death.
‘ My wife phoned family and friends and said, “Listen, I think he is on his way out”,’ said Burger. ‘I didn’t open my eyes for five days. I was there but sometimes it felt like I was going to stop fighting and then I would go, I’d be gone. Every heartbeat it felt like someone was putting a knife straight into my head.’
The South Africa Rugby Union president Oregan Hoskins has called Burger’s recovery one of the ‘ most inspirational sporting stories of our lifetime’ and he was awarded the Comeback of the Year prize at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai in April.
Listening to the retelling of a battle which began in 2012 with a knee injury that ruled him out for the season, it is hard to dispute those accolades.
‘In the 2013 pre-season I started back training and the knee was going well,’ he said.
‘Then all of a sudden I found a lump in my left leg, went for a scan and they found a massive cyst which was compressing two thirds of my spinal cord. I went for an exploratory operation to drain the fluid out of the cyst to see what it consisted of.
‘Somewhere in rugby I must have taken a big knock and the result was that I was leaking spinal fluid and it was filling the cyst and pressing my spinal cord. The bad news is that I got some kind of infection which went straight into my spinal cord, contaminating my spinal fluid.
‘This was the scary part. I went in weighing 110kg (17st 5lb) and things just changed like that. I had my first operation and then I was in dire straits — I knew I was in trouble. It was more scary for everyone around. I was battling heartbeat by heartbeat just trying to get through and that lasted for five days. I had another four operations to get rid of the cyst and pressure on my spinal cord and came out of hospital weighing 90kg (14st 2lb).’
Burger spent six weeks in hospital and a further seven weeks indoors, during which time he taught himself to walk again. In 2014, the famously hard-hitting loose forward was picked again for the Springboks squad and was named man of the match in the autumn international victory over England at Twickenham in November, in which he scored the decisive third try. Burger has been named in the line-up to face Japan on Saturday in South Africa’s opening game of the World Cup, and his side are favourites to finish first in their pool.
Burger is one of only two surviving members, along with Victor Matfield, of the squad that won the 2007 tournament and he plays a key motivational role in the dressing room.
The Burger family own a wine estate in Wellington, a town in the shadows of Western Cape mountains, a 45-minute drive from Cape Town, and father Schalk Snr also played for the Springboks.
They are a close-knit family and Burger said the thought of his son, also Schalk — six months old when meningitis struck his dad — and wife Michele, who he had married that year, drove him to fight the disease and get back to rugby.
‘ I cried from frustration and anger,’ he said. ‘At that stage, rugby wasn’t an option, it was just getting back to a normal life. Then I went back to train with the Stormers (South Africa Super Rugby side).
‘I went there just to get fit but one thing led to another and I got more ambitious. I don’t know how my wife let me play rugby again but she said, “If you want to, by all means go”.
‘But when you start coming back, that’s when it gets tough. You start making the commitment and you start playing rugby and you ask yourself, “Why”?
‘Because actually it’s easier to just stop, leave it and move on to the next phase. But I took the choice to go on. I wasn’t a very emotional guy beforehand but I am more emotional now.
‘It puts massive pressure on your support system. I have a great family and they were basically there saying goodbye. I put them through a hell of a lot. Everyone around me got one heck of a fright — including myself.’
Burger now has a second son, one-year- old Nicol, and is philosophical about how illness and injury has altered his outlook on life and what he values.
‘It puts life into perspective,’ he said. ‘Before I got injured, rugby pretty much dominated my life, it was 80 per cent plus. Whatever I did revolved around rugby. But now I see it as a much smaller part of my life, maybe 20 per cent. There is much more to life.’