IT WENT FROM A TIGHT CALF TO A CANCER SCARE
Dan Robson is happy to be fit and firing after a horror year dashed his World Cup hopes
DAN ROBSON would be entitled to harbour a sense of injustice but he does not. A ‘freak’ case of deep vein thrombosis undermined his World Cup hopes, but it didn’t end his career — and the scare gave him fresh perspective.
Today, the Wasps scrum-half will play against Harlequins in front of a big crowd at the Ricoh Arena, in a crucial Premiership fixture for his club. He may not have made it to Japan with the national team, but he is back doing what he loves.
Robson, 27, has not felt sorry for himself about the medical emergency which halted his involvement in England’s last Six Nations campaign. He recognises that it could have been far worse.
A week ago, club-mate Alex Rieder was forced to retire prematurely, following a long and painful battle to recover from a savage knee injury. Last year Sam Jones, another Wasps back-rower, had to quit after failing to recover from breaking his right leg and ankle.
So, Robson sees his own glass half-full but it was still quite some ordeal. A calf strain turned out to be DVT, which had spread from his lower leg to his lungs. He was told that he shouldn’t have even been walking, let alone running around at Twickenham, belatedly winning his first two Test caps. He was also warned, before receiving a clear diagnosis, that what was showing up on scans could be cancer. Recalling the sudden personal upheaval, Robson says: ‘ The week before we played Italy, I had a tight calf. I didn’t feel great but no one was really worried. I wasn’t worried. But after the Italy game I was sore again. I was struggling to walk first thing in the morning and my calf was really swollen, so I went to have it scanned.
‘I still wasn’t thinking too much of it. DVT was mentioned but just as a sort of worst-case scenario.
‘After the scan, I went to training on Monday afternoon and the next day the doc called me in. He just said, “That one thing we said it probably wasn’t going to be — it is. We’re going to have to get you to hospital”.
‘It was the Tuesday before the Scotland game. I had a few scans that day, then went back to hospital for more scans the next day. A lot of different words were flying around, which was scary. ‘They said it could be cancerous and the scans showed spots on my lungs. I had a big clot in my calf, a big clot above my pelvis and spots on my lungs. So it went from being a tight calf and me playing against Italy to, “This is pretty serious stuff”.’
A radiologist told Robson that he’d be out for at least six months, which would have ruined any prospect of him being fit for the World Cup. But a DVT specialist offered hope that the recovery could be quicker. Robson set himself a goal of being given the all-clear in three months and he hit that target, but the process wasn’t pleasant.
‘They do keyhole surgery so they went into my calf and sucked as much of it out as possible,’ he says. ‘ It was pretty gruesome. I was in hospital for two days and had a couple of operations. Then I was on blood-thinners for a few months. That kept me
out. I could do most things but not any contact in case I got a knock, because of the risk of a bleed. On the thinners, you bleed a lot quicker, so any head knocks could be very serious.
‘As soon as it happened, I wanted to set myself the goal that it would be a three-month thing, not six to nine. I wanted to be available for that first England camp selection.
‘For me to do that was a proud moment. It didn’t go the way I wanted after that but I was just pleased that I had got to that stage because it was a pretty severe health issue. After three months, I had scans to check whether I could come off the blood thinners. They were happy and they hadn’t found anything in my family history to suggest it could re- occur. They told me that it was a freak accident and I’d just been unlucky.’
Despite that medical verdict, there is no self- pity. ‘ It was tough, but I’m glad that I’ve been able to carry on in this profession,’ he says. ‘It was eyeopening. Suddenly, rugby is just one tiny component in a bigger picture. Sometimes you need something like that to happen, to take a step back and think, “This is all great, it’s everything that I wanted to do, but there is more to life than this”.’
Despite the disappointment of not being there, Robson watched the World Cup as an England fan. He wanted to support his friends but admitted that it was the ‘ strangest viewing experience’ of his life.
ROBSON will keep striving to catch the eye of Eddie Jones but after the ordeal he’s been through, the quest for Test recognition is not the be-all and end-all now. ‘Eddie has given me stuff to work on to get back in,’ he says. ‘There’s been nothing too much about the injury, which is fine. I don’t want sympathy and I’m not looking at that as an excuse for why I wasn’t in Japan. ‘Playing for England has always been the ultimate goal. That won’t change. but part of me is a bit more relaxed now so I don’t get so frustrated if things don’t go my way.’
Robson is suffering no knock- on effects from the DVT scare but there have been minor adjustments. He had short-haul summer holidays, as long flights would involve a brief return to using the blood-thinners. but all is relatively normal again. He helps his partner run a business sourcing cars — with many of his team- mates as clients — and the couple are preparing to foster a dog to join the three they have already.
However, his primary focus is on the day job. Wasps are 10th in the Premiership and need to win today. Robson is as upbeat about his club’s predicament as he has been about his own. ‘We’re not in the place we want to be, but I know it’s just a matter of time before things start to change,’ he says.