Athletes and Illness : Back from the Brink : Attitude Helps Capistrano Valley’s Thurlow Fight Off Spinal Meningitis

A teenage boy is not supposed to die.

Not a boy with impossible strawberry blond hair and a way of tilting back his head when he smiles.

Not a boy who lives to soar at a volleyball net and watch the ball go crashing down on the other side.

Not a brother. Not a son.

These thoughts ran over and over in the minds of dozens who gathered daily at Mission Regional Medical Center at Mission Viejo during the last week of March to help Ryan Thurlow fight for his life.

Thurlow, a starter for top-ranked Capistrano Valley, was stricken with spinal meningitis and lay in a coma for nearly 24 hours while doctors, family and friends feared he might die. Meningitis is an infection of the meninges--matter that envelopes the brain and spinal cord.

A spinal tap revealed that Thurlow’s meningitis was caused by a bacteria rather than a virus. The first 24 hours after the onset of bacterial meningitis are critical--most patients will die if they do not receive antibiotics in that period.

But because of his mother, who had rushed him to the hospital in time, and because of an immune system his doctor called remarkable, Thurlow fended off the disease.

Sitting on a couch in his living room last week, Thurlow fidgeted with a volleyball the USC men’s team signed and gave him in the hospital. If Thurlow had his way, he would already be back on the court. He expects to return in the next week.

“It hasn’t [hit me]. I don’t think about it at all. I’m just going on like it never happened. If I look back, it’s depressing. I think, ‘I could have died.’ So I never think about it,” he said.

Thurlow started feeling ill during his history class March 26 and by art class later that afternoon his left leg was stiff, he was weak and he could barely walk.

That evening, before Capistrano Valley hosted Trabuco Hills, Thurlow told Coach Darren Utterback he couldn’t play. In the middle of the first game, he asked his mother, Marcia, to take him home.

Thurlow took a hot shower and went to bed but vomited all night. His older brother, Brett, stopped by to drop off a car. It was Thurlow’s first car, but he was so sick he barely noticed it in the driveway.

Marcia, a teacher at Trabuco Mesa Elementary School, checked her son at about 5:30 a.m. and gave him a glass of water. She had arranged for a substitute teacher but she wanted to stop by the school later that morning and prepare some lesson plans. Once she started working, thoughts of Ryan kept gnawing at her.

“I thought, ‘There’s something wrong, he’s too sick.’ Then I would work for 10 minutes and then I would think again, ‘There’s something wrong, he’s too sick,’ ” she said.

At 7:15 a.m. she left Trabuco Mesa and headed home, where she found Ryan still vomiting. She took him to the hospital and no sooner had they walked into the emergency room than Thurlow began to slip into a coma.

“If he showed up to the emergency room 12 hours later, the outcome would have been different,” said Dr. Sana Al-Jundi, the pediatric intensive care specialist on duty at the time.

One good sign for Thurlow was that he had not yet gone into shock, when the heart rate drops and the mortality rate skyrockets. Still, his symptoms were severe.

“We couldn’t just reassure the mother that he was going to be OK,” Al-Jundi said.

Back at Capistrano Valley, Utterback received a call from Toby Thurlow, Ryan’s father. Utterback gathered the players to tell them what happened and to send them to their doctors because the disease is highly contagious--it can strike anyone and fatigue can make one especially susceptible to it.

“I just started praying,” said Mike Tully, a senior outside hitter who is one of Thurlow’s best friends. “I didn’t know what more I could do. I did a little bit of crying and praying and a lot of thinking. Ryan is such a nice guy, a good guy, and I couldn’t believe that something like this could ever happen to him.”

Utterback went to the hospital almost immediately and stayed there for the next 12 hours.

“I just thought it would be best to be there and to not say a whole lot,” Utterback said. “There wasn’t anything you could do. It was all up to time at that point.”

At about 3:30 a.m., as Marcia slept in a chair next to Ryan’s bed, a nurse shook her awake.

Thurlow was asking what time it was. He had awakened from the coma.

“It was pretty emotional just watching the family. When he woke up, it was like, ‘Yea!’ ” Al-Jundi said. “He has a tough body that has a good immune system. He fought it really well.”

Even after Thurlow woke up, there was still danger. He suffered severe headaches for several days and doctors monitored him to make sure that fluid had not gathered around his brain.

Thurlow doesn’t remember much of the days after he came out of the coma--he doesn’t remember every hour or so that his mother put her face six inches from his and tried to explain to him where he was. During that time, the people never stopped coming.

Marcia and Toby, who lost their first daughter, Stacy, when she was 14 months old to encephalitis in 1968, appreciated the support.

“I think that the key to this whole thing was the incredible response and love [of] his teammates and his schoolmates and the people from the churches,” said Toby, the dean of students at Mission Viejo High.

Thurlow, who also starts for the Capistrano Valley basketball team, is the type to inspire such a response. He showed up for a volleyball match at the Junior Olympics at Orlando, Fla., last summer wearing a boldly colored tie with images of California printed all over it. He loves to invent new phrases--”It’s almost like he has his own lingo,” said teammate Beau Rawi--and he often greets his friends with elaborate, new handshakes.

“He is just his own person and he is totally comfortable being who he is. He is not concerned about fitting in or whatever and I think that’s something that a lot of the kids kind of look up to,” Utterback said.

On April 2, seven days after he arrived in the emergency room, Thurlow went home. Two days later he drove his car for the first time, taking a spin by practice to surprise his teammates.

The Cougars are eager for Thurlow, a 6-foot-2 outside hitter, to return. In his most recent match, March 21 against second-ranked Esperanza, he had 26 kills to help Capistrano Valley to a victory. This is the talent that Thurlow took into the hospital last month.

“Me fighting the disease is like me on the court--very competitive,” he said. “I can’t lose out there.”

Thurlow’s living room is bright and sunny and a gentle breeze blows through lots of open doors and windows.

He takes a spot on the couch and his mother sits on the floor, leaning against a wall. Occasionally, there are tears--the fright was too real, too recent.

“We don’t dwell on it,” Marcia says. “We’re looking forward to so many great things for him and so is he. So, I think to go back and scare yourself all over again--it’s just too hard.”

Thurlow rubs his feet together in a slant of sunlight. He tosses the volleyball in the air and looks outside.

“I just can’t wait to get back out there.”