Hubinger Slowly Recovers From Mysterious Virus

The strapping young football player walked into the campus health center, the flu-like symptoms getting the best of him.

Four days later, Brian Hubinger was in a hospital intensive care unit, his body besieged by a mysterious and potentially deadly virus.

“They didn’t know what was wrong and they were sticking all these probes in me,” Hubinger said. “It was pretty scary.”

Hubinger, Cal State Northridge’s starting offensive right tackle when blindsided by the illness, is out of danger and recovering slowly.

The remnants of the virus eventually will disappear, he said, but the memories will linger.

Hubinger’s ordeal began Oct. 9, two days before the Matadors played host to Weber State in a Big Sky Conference game.

“I was practicing all week,” said Hubinger, a redshirt freshman from Arcadia High. “Thursday [Oct. 9], I had a headache in a night class and on the way [home] I started getting chills and I was very nauseated.”

He went looking for answers the next morning. A blood test at the health center showed an elevated white-cell count and he was sent to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

Hubinger, who in January had surgery to correct a congenital kidney condition, said doctors at first suspected there was a connection. When everything checked out there, the search shifted in other directions.

“Every time a test would come back, it would be negative,” said Carolyn Hubinger, Brian’s mother. “I said, ‘I’m not leaving [the hospital] until they tell me what’s wrong.’ ”

She was forced to hang around for awhile.

By Tuesday, four days after being admitted to the hospital, concern quickly yielded to fear. Hubinger developed serious breathing problems and was transferred to intensive care.

“They found that the virus had gone to the heart, causing it to pump like 30% of how it normally does,” Hubinger said. “That was causing a back-up of fluid into my lungs.

“When they come in and tell you your heart is not functioning right and they don’t know [why], you get pretty scared.”

Because they couldn’t pinpoint the virus, Carolyn Hubinger said doctors played a cat-and-mouse game that tested the family’s nerves.

“They said, ‘We’ll just have to get through the night. We’ll have to react to what his body does and help him out that way,’ ” she said.

Hubinger was moved out of intensive care after four days, not the wiser about the illness but at least able to breathe easier in more ways than one.

With doctors still baffled, Hubinger was released from the hospital on Oct. 21, 11 days after first getting there. His 6-foot-4 frame had shed 23 pounds from his 255-pound playing weight and he had virtually no energy.

Even now, Hubinger is not at full strength, his days measured by small improvements. He recently started driving again and returned Tuesday to his Northridge apartment after recuperating at his parents’ home in Arcadia.

Hubinger is hoping to resume college life but not this semester. He visited the school two weeks ago to be part of the team picture and watched Northridge’s game against Cal State Sacramento from the stands on Oct. 25.

“It looks at this point like I’m going to have to take a drop [from classes],” Hubinger said. “The whole semester is pretty much gone and I’ll lose a year of eligibility but I’m not worried about that.”

And about the virus that threatened his life?

“They might never find out,” he said.