Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 13, 1990 TAG: 9004130869
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Long
What's an outstanding teen-age athlete to do when he no longer is able to live up to his own high expectations?
Giles High athletic standouts John Hunt and Jared Wilburn can answer that. Despite battling low blood sugar - a condition known as hypoglycemia - Hunt and Wilburn have managed to keep plugging.
And playing. Both are infielders-pitchers on the Spartans' baseball team this spring.
It's a good thing for Giles that they have persevered. They are among the best athletes at the school, their malady notwithstanding.
The athletic achievements of Hunt and Wilburn have been remarkable indeed, considering there are days they hardly can muster enough energy to put one foot in front of the other.
But at least they know what the problem is. Within months of each other, Hunt and Wilburn started noticing symptoms in 1988.
It took awhile to pinpoint the problem. Each visited six to eight different doctors before a correct diagnosis was made.
"I was at Duke University and they told me it was all in my mind," said Wilburn, a 5-foot-8, 160-pound junior. "They tried to tell me I should see a psychiatrist."
That advice was not well received.
"I felt like telling him off," Wilburn said of the doctor who made that suggestion. "But what I did tell him was that these things were too real to be in my mind."
After a number of trips to doctors, Hunt ended up at the University of Virginia for tests. His experience was similar to that of Wilburn.
"They wanted to send a head shrink [psychiatrist] up to talk to me," said Hunt, a 5-11, 165-pound senior. "I told them there wasn't any way."
Incorrect diagnoses are not unusual with hypoglycemia, said Dr. Elsa Paulsen, a pediatric and adolescent diabetologist at the UVa Medical Center.
"It's like a broken record; you hear it all the time," said Paulsen, who diagnosed Hunt. "They tell women that they're suffering from a nervous condition. They tell others they're depressed.
"These people know they have something wrong with them. It makes them angry to hear [the problem may originate in their minds]. I don't blame them for being angry."
Wilburn eventually spent a week at Roanoke Memorial Hospital undergoing a battery of tests. Eventually, doctors identified the problem.
"It was a pretty painful week," Wilburn said.
Also painful, but on a different level, was the discovery that something was wrong. After all, what could be worse for a go-for-it kind of guy than having a sudden inclination to turn into a couch potato?
Wilburn realized something was wrong after the 1988 football season. "I was dead tired all the time," he said.
Hunt's symptoms, which started to emerge early in that same season, were more dramatic. He passed out during practice a couple of times. Two games were all he could manage before he was done for the season.
"Hypoglycemia can be very dangerous," Paulsen said. "The brain absolutely requires glucose [sugar] to function. If the glucose level falls to a certain level, then one of the first things that happens is the person passes out."
Wilburn missed the entire 1988-89 basketball season and part of the following baseball campaign. A wingback in the Spartans' single-wing offense, he played all but two games during the 1989 football season, missing two because of injuries. He also played the entire 1989-90 basketball season, coming off the bench as coach Rusty Kelley's sixth man.
"That was rough," he said. "Real rough. It took a lot out of me to play basketball."
Hunt knew better than to try playing basketball.
"I didn't even attempt it," he said. "I spent half last season lying in the bleachers half out of it. I knew there just wasn't any way."
Hunt took a stab at playing football this year.
"I didn't want to quit, although I probably should have," he said. "I kept pushing and pushing."
The last time Hunt was seen in a Giles uniform before baseball season was when he made a splendid 43-yard touchdown run through a tough Radford defense in a loss to the Bobcats. A fullback, Hunt crossed the goal line and collapsed. He had to be carried from the field.
That was the last down of high school football he'll ever play.
"I didn't have anything left," he said. "I felt bad before the game. I told some of the guys that I was feeling that way. Just before I ran for that touchdown, [tailback] Shawn Eaves asked me if I was feeling all right. I told him I wasn't.
"Shawn was yelling over to the sideline for them to send [backup fullback] Richie [Lavinder] in, but I told them I was all right and to leave me in."
When Wilburn saw Hunt plunge to the turf as though shot with an elephant gun, he was horrified.
"I remember seeing him go down and that tore me up pretty bad," Wilburn said. "I knew he was in bad shape."
Even though they are separated by a year in age, Hunt and Wilburn were close before they became ill. They're probably closer now. After all, hardly anybody else can fully understand what they're going through.
Hypoglycemia is a prediabetic condition that is part of a family of disorders afflicting the body's endocrine (glandular) system. Wilburn was told the condition is found most often in people older than he.
Having a friend to confide in helps a great deal, he said. "Most people don't understand at all."
The main thing people should understand is that there are all sorts of problems associated with the disorder.
Until Hunt started to undergo treatment, the effects on his schoolwork were disastrous.
"I was an A-B student and my grades fell way, way down," he said. "You'd be in class physically, but mentally not there at all."
Wilburn had those experiences, along with headaches and the ever-present fatigue.
"You have good days and you have bad days," he said. "But still, I haven't felt completely right since I had this thing."
Life has not been uninterrupted gloom for Hunt and Wilburn. There are bright spots.
"I eat anything you put in front of me," Hunt said with a grin.
One part of the treatment is that patients must eat the equivalent of six meals per day. When engaged in non-strenuous activities, they must eat every 2 1/2 hours. If they're active, they must eat every 30 minutes (the diet prohibits sugar products).
During football season, some interesting situations developed as a result of the players' dietary requirements. Both Wilburn and Hunt took bags of snacks and diet drinks to practice with them. When a break was needed, no questions were asked by the coaches.
During a Group AA Division 3 playoff game against Graham, Giles coach Steve Ragsdale called for an onside kick. Wilburn, the kicker, couldn't be found for a moment. He was at the bench gobbling up some crackers.
"I felt awful about that," said Wilburn, the son of the Spartans' golf coach, Bob Wilburn. "I didn't hear them yelling for me."
Nobody would ever accuse Wilburn of shying away from the action.
"Jared's a very aggressive kid," said Bruce Frazier, Giles' baseball coach. "He's one of those ones who likes to get down and get dirty. You can see it by the way he plays. He plays for keeps, even in practice."
That was never more evident than one practice session last week. Wilburn laid flat out while leaping to snag a grounder during infield drills. He landed on his belly. What was notable, though, was that he did so indoors on a gym floor, not on a grass infield. Giles had been forced inside by unfavorable weather conditions.
Hunt bats fourth in the lineup and is steady at shortstop.
"He's real quiet," Frazier said. "He'll quietly do something like give you a couple of hits or go in the hole to save you a run."
In the first three games of the year, Hunt went 7 for 12 with a double and triple and seven runs batted in. Wilburn was 10 for 15 with eight runs scored.
Unlike basketball and, to a lesser extent football, baseball does not involve continuous exertion. There is time to recharge. However, there is potential for one problem later in the season.
"When it gets real hot, it really wipes us out," Wilburn said.
Hunt and Wilburn will deal with that when the time comes. Until then, Frazier is glad to have them in the lineup.
And they're glad to be there.
by CNB