San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘THE SKY’S THE LIMIT’
Mensah is back from serious health scare, attacking on offense
The San Diego State basketball team returned from a short break on Christmas evening last season and practiced in empty Viejas Arena. Nathan Mensah felt fine.
The Aztecs practiced the next day, and the next. He felt fine.
They played Cal Poly there the following afternoon.
“I woke up feeling not too well,” Mensah said, “and I thought it was just one of those days where as soon as I start sweating, I’ll be back on my feet. After warmups, I wasn’t feeling that well and I told Sergio (Ibarra, SDSU’S trainer) to give me some vapor rub. Sergio rubbed a little bit under my nose, and I thought, ‘Yeah, I feel good to go.’ ”
He wasn’t.
By that night, the 6foot-10 center from Ghana was coughing blood. By the following morning, he was in an ambulance being transported to a hospital better equipped to handle a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in his lung. By New Year’s Eve, his regular season was over.
More than 10 months later, Mensah spoke publicly for the first time about those harrowing hours and days, recounting the fear that paralyzed him so much he couldn’t form words when doctors asked if he had any questions.
“All I could do is keep looking at my phone and keep reading what I was reading about Chris Bosh,” Mensah said. “Everything was frozen in the moment.”
It was the first thing that popped into a web search after doctors told him he had a pulmonary embolism, or PE. A pulmonary what? The only thing that wasn’t frozen was his thumb, scrolling down the screen. Bosh, the All-star forward for the Miami Heat, had his career cut short by recurring blood clots.
That was Dec. 29. The day before, Mensah felt winded during the 73-57 win against Cal Poly and asked to be subbed out early in the second half. Wednesday night’s 2020-21 season opener against UCLA at Viejas Arena will be his first game since.
“I remember he came out of the game,” said Kwaku Amoaku, Mensah’s guardian and the founder of the African Youth Basketball Organization that facilitated
his move from Ghana. “I didn’t really understand it. I thought maybe (winning big) they were just not going to play him much or something.
“When I saw him after the game in the locker room, he just said he couldn’t breath really well and didn’t feel well, just thought he was getting sick. It was, ‘OK, go home and take care of yourself, no problem.’ The next thing I remember is getting a call from Sergio the next morning, and him saying we might have something serious.”
Mensah coughed up blood in the sink later that night and texted a photo to Ibarra. He coughed more blood the next morning and texted another photo.
“The second picture I showed to Sergio, the blood was really dark,” Mensah said. “He said we have to go to the emergency room right away.”
When he was transferred to another hospital, coach Brian Dutcher and his wife, Jan, were there waiting for him. So was the rest of the staff.
Mensah spent two nights in the hospital before returning to his campus apartment on New Year’s Eve. The Aztecs hosted Fresno State at noon the next day, and Mensah, who had never missed a game in his SDSU career, planned to sit on the bench in street clothes. He wasn’t there at tipoff.
“I couldn’t get out of my bed until the second half,” Mensah said. “I couldn’t walk without getting tired easily. I couldn’t use stairs. It took 20 minutes to walk from my apartment to Viejas. It usually takes five.”
The next morning, Amoaku’s wife checked on him. She loaded him into her car and drove to their Valley Center home, where he spent the next two weeks convalescing. He didn’t want to eat and lost weight. He had trouble sleeping because he wasn’t allowed to lie flat.
“He looked terrible, he felt terrible,” Amoaku said.
“Any time I went to the hospital and started listening to the doctors, they’d bring up the caution aspect,” Mensah said. “My mind would zoom out and I couldn’t pay attention anymore. They’d ask me if I had any questions. I couldn’t utter a word or ask anything I wanted to ask.”
The concern was less his current than future condition. The body eventually would dissolve the clot, but the anticoagulants or blood thinners that are typically prescribed for a minimum of three months come with the strict prohibition of physical contact. Like, for instance, Division I basketball.
“I know for a fact he was thinking about everything going on and whether it was worth it for him to play again for the quality of his life,” Amoaku said. “He has other things he wants to do aside from basketball. I’m sure that would go through any kid’s head, wondering if he will ever play again, if he should play again.
“I think his relationship with God helped him through that, kept him strong and helped him believe everything would be OK. After two or three weeks, he got some information that made him feel better from sitting down with doctors. San Diego State has been awesome about the medical attention he received, and the doctors were very optimistic.”
A carrot was placed on a stick: returning for the NCAA Tournament in midmarch for an Aztecs team that would go 30-2 and be ranked as high as No. 4 in the major polls.
After a few weeks, Mensah was cleared to work out by himself at practice. He went from not being unable to run continuously for five minutes, to 10 to 20. He started gaining back weight. He was cleared for non-contact drills. He was cleared to travel with the team to reacclimate to the rhythms of game day.
Mensah, Amoaku and Dutcher have all said they’re convinced he would have been available in the NCAA Tournament, at least in spurts off the bench, had it not been canceled by the coronavirus pandemic. Suddenly, it wasn’t just Mensah who wasn’t permitted to have contact. Now the whole world couldn’t.
Mensah gained medical and administrative permission to resume contact on
Oct. 21, the same day the team’s pandemic protocols were lifted to allow five-onfive drills in practice. He still takes blood thinners, but doctors spent the past months meticulously calibrating their levels in his body and creating a daily window for practice and games.
He takes the medication at 6 a.m. and by 10 a.m. is OK for contact. He takes it again in the evening and fills out a daily questionnaire after practice to monitor whether he took any particularly heavy blows or falls.
The procedure is different. The player is, too.
“In our scrimmage last (week),” Dutcher said, “I saw something out of Nathan I hadn’t seen yet. He stepped out of the offense and played his game within it. Most guys go A to B to C, and they do a good job of that. Nathan went A to C finally. He saw opportunities to attack that we didn’t draw up for him, and he made those plays. If he continues to do that, he’s going to have a great junior season.”
Senior wing Matt Mitchell noticed it, too.
He didn’t hesitate on Mountain West media day when asked which SDSU player might surprise people around the league this season.
“I’d say Nathan Mensah,” Mitchell said. “Last year he proved to be a very big factor for us on the defensive end, but I think his offensive game is coming along really well. On both sides of the floor, he’s going to look to dominate. I think the sky’s the limit for Nate. I think people are keeping him in their rear-view mirror, and it’s time for him to come to life.”
An interesting choice of word, life.
Mensah said doctors told him, after months of blood draws and scans, after endless consultations with specialists, they don’t suspect his pulmonary embolism has genetic roots but more likely was a freak, one-off occurrence, as can happen sometimes. Still, they told him the data suggests there’s a 13 percent chance it could recur.
The majority of elite athletes with PES resume their playing career. Those who have a second clot usually do not.
“I have to be realistic about that,” Mensah said. “Even though 13 percent sounds small, you can never (dismiss) that. I still have it in the back of my head, but I won’t let that hinder my process of playing basketball. I think about it, but I don’t think about it too much that it makes me play passively.”
Amaoku noticed the change during their summer workouts in the heat of Valley Center.
“The guy was relentless in his work ethic,” Amoaku said. “I definitely sensed that he realized, look, this could be taken from me at any moment, so you don’t want to have any regrets if that happens. But he’s not thinking it’s going to happen and he’s not going to play like that.
“You’ve just got to live your life. You can’t be scared.”
“On both sides of the f loor, he’s going to look to dominate.” Teammate Matt Mitchell • On Nathan Mensah’s progress