Survivor Petteway returns to his court
Malik Petteway would wake up in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe.
He’d been dealing with pain in his left calf muscle. The initial MRI in late December 2017 showed swelling, a sign of a muscle strain or pull.
But why would that cause shortness of breath?
Petteway, a junior who had transferred to Robert Morris from Northwest Florida State College, could only muster 14 minutes in the Colonials’ loss Dec. 19 to N.C. State, where he really started to feel fatigued.
He has asthma and would use his inhaler, to no avail. He fielded the question, “Why do you look so exhausted?”
He started wearing a walking boot on occasion to take some stress off his aching calf, sitting out the following two games, rallying to play a lackluster 16 minutes in a win at Central Connecticut State, close to his hometown of Waterbury, on Jan. 4, 2018.
“We come back, and he’s a mess,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said.
That game, as it turned out, would be his last of the season.
“I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Petteway said. “I can’t keep on playing on one leg and one lung.”
The next day, Petteway went to the hospital, where he was dealt devastating news — an ultrasound revealed blood clots in his left calf and lungs, and he was immediately put on blood thinners to dissipate them.
Fourteen months later, Petteway is a key contributor for the Colonials, the No. 2 scorer (10.5) and rebounder (5.4) on a team that hopes to win the Northeastern Conference tournament and earn an NCAA tournament berth.
But at that time, in addition to his health, Petteway’s basketball career — and so much of his identity — was in danger.
“They were telling me, ‘You’ll probably never play basketball again,’” Petteway said.
The aftermath
Early on, Malik’s mom, Kim Petteway, knew blood clots were a possibility, and she had a sinking feeling more bad news would follow.
Malik’s dad, Mark, struggled with blood clots when he was 34 and then again at 40, with clots in his lungs and right leg both times.
It’s either hereditary, Kim thought, or one heck of a coincidence.
By some miracle, coincidence
Blood clots threatened to end career of RMU senior forward a season ago
it was. And after testing for a genetic marker, she breathed a sigh of relief. Had it been hereditary, with a high likeliness of more clots popping up, basketball would have been a no-go.
“I’m saying to myself, ‘It’s got to be genetic. It has to be genetic.’ When all the the results came back and they said it wasn’t, I was jumping for joy,” Kim said. “I was really happy.”
When the diagnosis was confirmed, she panicked at what might have been, given that Petteway had been playing and flying with the team for the first third of the season.
“I was like, ‘My son could have dropped dead on the court,’” Kim said.
Blood clots can be tricky to diagnose in athletes, according to the National Blood Clot Alliance, because they’re uncommon in young, healthy people, so it’s easy to interpret the symptoms as something less serious, like an ankle sprain, shin splints or muscle pull.
As an explosive, physical forward, it seemed more likely Petteway (6 feet 8, 240 pounds) would be struggling with an injury — especially because, when treated with stretching and heat, the pain would often let up, according to Robert Morris athletic trainer Jason Daley.
“Before the [Central Connecticut] game, we had spoken, and he said, ‘I’m feeling pretty good, I’d like to try,’” said Daley, who at that point still thought Petteway was dealing with a muscle problem. “We hadn’t had the ultrasound yet. I called our doctor and said, ‘Doc, what do you think?’ And doc said, ‘As long as the pain doesn’t progress to debilitating, as long as he gets no vascular symptoms, no neurological symptoms, I don’t have a problem with him participating.’”
A blood clot diagnosis can mean the end of a career, as in the case of former Miami Heat star Chris Bosh, who had to have emergency surgery after one of his clots traveled to his lungs (otherwise known as a pulmonary embolism), and whose clots were reoccurring.
Sometimes, it’s a major setback, but recovery is possible.
Another setback
With Petteway sidelined, told to stay on blood thinners for six months then check back in, the Colonials finished the season 16-17, upsetting No. 2 seed Mount St. Mary’s in the Northeastern Conference tournament before falling to Wagner in the semifinals.
While his teammates were practicing and playing in games, Petteway got tired if he walked up a hill. He couldn’t really practice, for fear of cuts or bruises. Petteway had more time on his hands and didn’t know where to focus.
So, the soft-spoken criminal justice major poured himself into school. He paid attention to the news. He stopped to consider what was going on in other parts of the world.
“It changed my perspective a lot,” Petteway said. “Taking a lot of time off, you start to realize … not even a basketball perspective. You realize all this stuff that’s happening around the world, and you become more aware of things that are happening in other states, other countries, all that stuff. It made me just open up and just tell myself that it’s bigger than basketball. Although I do love the game.”
But the game wouldn’t come back to him for a while longer.
After about two months, Petteway started back up with noncontact drills and workouts. In July, he came off blood thinners, as planned, 10 days before his check-up.
On July 10, Daley found Petteway laying down in the RMU locker room, having a difficult time breathing, feeling pain in his calf again. They went to the hospital for an ultrasound right away.
The good news? The clots in his lungs had dissolved.
The bad? The larger clot in his left calf was still present, though it had healed some. Three more months on blood thinners. Flip the calendar forward, and that’s not too far from the start of the 2018-19 season.
“He’s trying to figure out, one, if he’s healthy,” Toole said. “Two, can he get back out on the court? At that point in time, he’d started to some more physical activity. He’d started to lift again.”
What other option was there, though, but to stay the course?
Back in action
The appointment in late October was on a Thursday, and the call wasn’t supposed to come until the following Monday or Tuesday. Petteway had already waited about 10 months … what’s another three or four days?
But on Friday, he got a pleasant surprise in the form of a call from his mom — he was in the clear, officially clot-free.
“He came in here and I had never seen him so happy in his life,” Toole said. “It was really amazing to see how happy he was, and how excited he was, and how excited his teammates were for him. That he’d be able to have his senior season and that he’d be able to go out on the court and play.”
It could have brought his career (and more) to a halt; instead, he’s healthy and thriving.
““I’ve prayed a lot for you, kid,’” Daley said he told him. “‘I can’t tell you how happy I am, and I want to cry for you.’ For a long time, it looked bad. It’s one of those things that you’ve seen major players [deal with.]”
These days, when Robert Morris travels, Petteway doesn’t have to fight for an aisle seat. It’s doctor’s orders. He takes an aspirin before he flies, has to get up and walk around every 45 minutes, and does calf exercises to keep the blood flowing. Daley monitors him closely, and Petteway wears compression sleeves as needed.
For all his quietness off the court, he’s a physical, loud force on it. He’s good around the rim, with the range to shoot from outside, too.
This is the guy Toole had in mind when he recruited Petteway. The Colonials open NEC tournament play Wednesday at home against St. Francis Brooklyn, and they’ll need production from him to win.
“We need that lift for our team,” said sophomore forward David Cole, a close friend of Petteway’s. “Just seeing him take off and expand and being the person that he’s capable of being, it’s great, it’s inspiration. Just seeing him knocked down off his feet, be told he wasn’t going to play the game that he loved anymore, and kind of get hit with news that he wasn’t ready for, and he took it and he made sure he didn’t let that stop him from doing anything he had planned for himself.”
This is Petteway’s final year of eligibility. According to NCAA bylaws, players can’t receive a medical redshirt if they’ve competed in more than one-third of their team’s games during their injured season. Petteway competed in 39 percent, and RMU’s appeal was denied by the conference.
Honored on the team’s senior night Feb. 23, Petteway has learned there’s life outside of basketball.
But in the meantime, since he’s gotten it back, he’s taking full advantage.
“I think everybody in the locker room has been so happy that Malik has been able to get on the court, has been able to perform the way he has,” Toole said. “Everybody knows his talent, everybody knows what he’s capable of, and I think everybody was a little bit concerned that he might not ever have the chance to show it.
“For him to be out there on the court and playing the way he’s playing is awesome, and I think he’s taken advantage of this opportunity that he got given back to him after his health got right.”