Courtney Lawes has won 105 caps for England and toured twice with the Lions. He says he has never been in pain like the first five days of the staph infection that put him in hospital for 10 days.
“It took like three days to get anything stronger than paracetamol,” the Sale Sharks forward told James Haskell on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby.
A week in, a doctor told him his blood inflammation reading had hit 240. Normal is under five.
A man who gets hit for a living could not get a hospital to see how much he was hurting. Would you have made more noise? Tell us below.
Why did nobody see how much pain Courtney Lawes was in?
Lawes has his own answer. “I think I was not being dramatic enough.”
Anyone who has sat in a changing room will get that. You learn early to play it down. You tell the physio it’s a six when it’s a nine, because a nine means you don’t train on Tuesday.
Try that in a hospital and you get paracetamol.
He did not blame the staff and did not name the hospital. By then his temperature was 39 and he was sharing a room with six other patients. The first antibiotic was doing nothing.
“The darkest place I’ve probably ever been”
He almost stayed at home. He thought it was flu, and so did Sale’s medics when he rang them that morning. His wife, Jess, told him to go to A&E. She is not one to overreact, he said, so he went.
A doctor saw him at about 1am and took blood. Then it was back to the waiting room.
“The darkest place I’ve probably ever been in my life,” he said of that wait.
He was in a bed by 4am. The blood cultures took until the Wednesday. They showed staph, in his bloodstream.
He is not the first big name to talk this openly about a health scare. Sonny Bill Williams did the same after his heart surgery.
What does a blood reading of 240 mean?
Nobody explained his numbers until he had been in for a week. Then one of the doctors who admitted him, a rugby fan, dropped by.
Lawes recalled what the doctor said: “Mate, your blood inflammation markers got to 240.” He asked what they should be. “They’re supposed to be under five.”
He did not say which test that was. The most common inflammation test is called CRP, where a healthy adult is usually below five.
“That was the most pain I reckon I’ve ever tolerated in like a five-day period,” he said. The only time he had needed morphine after an operation, he added, was his knee.
What did he see on that ward?
Lawes is home now, with an IV line still in. There are kids to look after, he said, so you crack on.
One thing he would not go into. “Some of the stuff that I saw in that hospital,” he said, and called it “a crazy time”. He left it there.
The rugby question comes next. He says his pre-season is gone, and England had already told him to wait.
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