A Penn basketball player's near-death experience

THEY SAY most people grow up more during their college years than at any other time of their life. Penn senior Jamal Lewis is one of those examples. Just not for any of the usual reasons.

Like a lot of student-athletes who matriculate to West Philly, he had things he wanted to accomplish that involved both basketball and his future. Yet never could he have foreseen a journey where the singular objective at one point was to keep on living.

"I think I'm completely different now," the 6-foot guard said. "It didn't all go the kind of way I'd hoped, but here I am. You never think something like that is going to happen to you."

In March 2014, Lewis nearly died from a staph infection that kept him in a hospital for three weeks. He spent six days in a medically induced coma. One time, his immediate family (he's the youngest of three brothers) were told to come to his hospital room, because doctors weren't sure he was going to make it.

About a month later, when he was back home in suburan Washington, he learned he had MRSA. That necessitated still more time in a hospital. After that, of course, there was also physical therapy for his damaged left shoulder (where the infection started). Not to mention other setbacks while he was trying to come back and play again.

"There's a lot of different angles you can look at this," said Lewis, who sat out the 2014-15 season, but will graduate in May with a degree in environmental science before he begins to work on his master's. "It made me realize what's really important and what's not. Basketball was the only thing I (used to) really care about. That's who I'd been since I was little. I did well at school, but that was my identity. I had to really figure out who I was as a person."

Just before he became sick, his aunt died from breast cancer. And about the same time he was dealing with his ordeal, a friend was also waging her battle with a rare form of cancer. She later passed away, too. All of which left Lewis searching for answers.

"When I was kind of recovering from everything, a lot of the time, I would wonder why I was still alive and they weren't," said Lewis, a onetime starter who's averaging 3.2 points in 11.1 minutes coming off the bench for the 6-9 Quakers and first-year coach Steve Donahue. "I spent a lot of time reflecting on that. I talked to my parents about it, but I didn't really know how to talk to other people.

"You tell them you almost died and they all think you're exaggerating. So it's hard. They don't realize how close I actually came to dying. I felt like no one really took it seriously. They just thought maybe I was sick . . .

"I've come to look at things in such a new light. I see the bigger picture, in a lot of things that were hard for me to see before. Like just talking to someone and really engaging in that conversation, as opposed to wishing you were doing something else. I don't look forward to tests, but, yeah, I get to take them. I can stay up to 3 a.m. doing a paper. I embrace all that."

Lewis has trouble remembering all the brutal details. His parents had to fill him in on a lot of that. They even took some "pretty graphic" photos, but nobody else will ever see them. "A lot of it's a blur," he acknowledged. "Maybe it's better I don't remember."

After a while, it all seemed like "piling on." And it started with a pimple on his left armpit that developed from an ingrown hair, which nobody was able to connect until later on. At first, they thought he simply had a virus.

"We have billions of ingrown hairs on our bodies," Lewis said. "It only took one. That's crazy."

He had periods of nonstop itching. And he suffered from chills. The pimple swelled to where he couldn't move his arm. He had rashes and headaches. Eventually, his lungs filled with fluids, which is what finally sent his body to the brink. His blood pressure dropped dramatically. After he thought he was in the clear, toxins began attacking his system. During his second hospital stay, he developed blood clots, pneumonia and intense diarrhea. His skin turned red. The bad bacteria had to be flushed out of him. Then he began bleeding excessively from two surgical incisions in his armpit, which meant undergoing two more procedures within four days.

He figures he saw about every available specialist there was to see.

"It actually felt like I was being quarantined for a while," he said.

During his recovery, an ambulance had to come and get him once more, when he was diagnosed with a condition in which proteins began breaking down his muscles. That caused "literally" his "entire body" to cramp up for an hour, which led to him needing 11 bags of intravenous fluids over the course of three days.

"It got to where everyone was just like, 'We don't know what to do with you,' " Lewis said. "I guess it just took time to get everything right inside me.

"If I never see another hospital . . . "

His mother, Carolyn, obviously understands, as maybe only a mom can.

"When they told us he'd taken a turn for the worst, my husband (Wayne) and I were paralyzed," she recalled. "We really couldn't move. Then the tears started flowing. You don't know what's going to happen. We thought he just had flulike symptoms. You try to get yourself together, but there were some rough moments."

The first thing Lewis remembers hearing when he woke up from the coma was her voice.

"I had all this gospel music downloaded onto my iPad, and I had it up to his ears," Carolyn said. "I sang to him, over and over and over, just tried to make him comfortable. He thought he was asleep for a couple of hours. He had no idea. When he found out he was, like, 'Six days of my life are gone.' That's why we took pictures. I wanted him to know exacty what went on.

"It wasn't his time. He has that second chance. He's always been determined, but I just sat there and shook my head. You don't have to understand the why. God had something else in store for him."

Lewis was one of four in his recruiting class. The only other who's still on the team is starting center Darien Nelson-Henry, the Quakers' top scorer and rebounder. He believes his friend's story is inspirational.

"It's a testament to his willpower, his ability to succeed," Nelson-Henry said. "He was doing schoolwork when he was in the hospital. Yet he downplays it. I can't imagine going through what he did. It makes you appreciate what you have. He handled the situation unbelievably. I don't have an answer for how he did it.

"He's used that experience to kind of teach people how to approach each day. He's changed my outlook on a lot of things in my life. He stays so positive, no matter what. He's one of those guys who's just trying to make the most out of every opportunity he's given. I don't know if you can ask much more of a person."

Lewis tries to only look ahead, although he knows the past will always be an indelible part of his DNA. Now, and when he's telling his story to his grandchildren. It will remain just as meaningful then.

"I had to figure out what to do," he said. "I know in the hospital I wrote a paper about ancient Rome, but I can't remember what I wrote. There's a lot of that. You learn to really focus on what you can control. Because there's so much that you can't."

Originally in communications, he wound up switching majors, despite the fact that he nearly flunked an environmental science class as a freshman, because he wanted to do something he was truly passionate about.

"That stems directly from my sickness," he said. "Most illnesses stem from the environment . . . I was so lost. Now I'm at peace with the fact that it happened."

And he's playing basketball, even if it wasn't the role he once envisioned for himself.

"I missed it," he said. "I missed being with the guys. I thought I might not play again. I don't worry about how much I'm going to play anymore, and I'm OK with that. I hope my story can help people going through their own issues.

"Everyone goes through something that causes their perspective to change. Mine just happened to be something that almost took my life away. It doesn't make me a better person. It's just part of my story."

kernm@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @mikekerndn