Last Night, the Doctor Asked If I Wanted a Priest

One Night. One Important Lesson.

Yesterday morning, I sat up in bed and could not breathe.

Not the kind of shortness of breath you casually explain away after a bad night of coughing. Not the kind you blame on being overworked, under-recovered, or fighting off whatever respiratory bug happens to be circulating. I mean the kind of breathing that makes your body send an immediate and unmistakable message that something is wrong.

And yet, despite spending more than two decades in sports medicine, performance, injury prevention, and return-to-play environments, my first instinct was not concern.

It was negotiation.

For two weeks, I had convinced myself I was battling bronchitis. The cough made sense. The chest discomfort made sense. The fatigue made sense. Even the shortness of breath felt explainable—at least if I worked hard enough to explain it away. High performers are uniquely talented at this. We rationalize symptoms. We compartmentalize discomfort. We convince ourselves that because we have pushed through hard things before, this must be another one of those moments.

So I did exactly what many athletes, coaches, and driven adults do.

I ignored it.

I got out of bed. I got dressed. I took my son Padraig to school. Even he noticed something was off.

“Daddy, I think you should go to the doctor.”

Children often see reality more clearly than adults because they have not yet learned how to suppress obvious truths in service of productivity.

And still, I went to work.

I trained three clients.

I coached.

I functioned.

Eventually, even I had to admit that this was not normal. I called my primary care physician. They sent me to urgent care. Urgent care quickly redirected me to the emergency room. From there, the pace changed in a way that makes even the most stubborn person understand this is no longer routine.

Tests. Imaging. Bloodwork. Conversations happening quickly but not yet fully explained.

By midnight, two ICU teams from two separate hospitals were discussing my case and determining whether the next move would involve aggressive anticoagulation or emergency intervention.

Then the questions changed.

If your heart stops, do you want us to resuscitate you?

If we bring you back and there is meaningful neurologic damage, how aggressively would you want treatment continued?

Who makes decisions for you if you cannot?

Those are not questions anyone expects to answer on what began as an ordinary weekday.

At 1:30 in the morning, once I was brought to my room, connected to monitors, started on heavy medication, and left alone with my thoughts, my doctor gently asked me:

“Would you like a priest?”

That tends to sharpen perspective quickly.

But here is the truth.

This story did not begin yesterday. This Was Nine Years in the Making

What happened in that hospital was not some random medical event.

It was the apex of nine years of warning signs, medical intervention, cumulative frustration, and eventually, dangerous decision-making.

For nearly a decade, I have been dealing with recurrent blood clots. That journey has included specialists, blood thinners, imaging, unanswered questions, repeated monitoring, and a staggering amount of healthcare interaction. By my rough estimate, I have been to more than 200 medical appointments over the last nine years.

That is approximately one appointment every fifteen days. For nearly a decade.

When people see someone who continues to work, coach, parent, build a business, and show up daily, they often assume everything is manageable.

That assumption can be dangerously wrong.

Because one of the most difficult chapters of this story was not the clotting itself.

It was the treatment.

Over the last five years, chronic anticoagulation brought with it excessive bleeding severe enough to create persistent anemia and iron depletion that required iron infusions every four weeks for years at a time. Not occasionally. Not when convenient. Routinely. Relentlessly.

There were stretches where my quality of life deteriorated in ways most people never saw.

I had days where carrying my own son upstairs felt impossible.

Days where putting away weights at Stadium felt physically draining.

Walking to the soccer field could leave me winded.

Demonstrating basic exercise could feel disproportionately exhausting.

There were afternoons where I took naps under my desk just to function.

Other days, I would pull behind Bank of America or Taco Bell, recline the seat in my car, and try to steal twenty minutes of sleep between responsibilities because I had absolutely nothing left.

That is not high performance.

That is survival disguised as productivity.

And eventually, I hit a breaking point.

The Dangerous Psychology of “I Can’t Keep Doing This”

There is an important distinction between making a poor decision because you do not understand the consequences and making one because you are physically and emotionally exhausted by the alternatives.

I understood the risks.

That may be the most uncomfortable part of this story.

I knew exactly what blood thinners were protecting me from.

I also knew what they were doing to my daily life.

The bleeding became so disruptive that basic routines became emotionally charged. There were stretches where I avoided eating because I was afraid of what would happen later when I needed to use the bathroom. Every day became some version of management, calculation, adaptation, or compromise.

Eventually, I rationalized stepping away from the very medication designed to keep me alive.

Not because I was uninformed. Because I was tired. Because I was frustrated. Because I convinced myself I could manage the risk.

That is not toughness. That is not resilience.

That is what happens when high-functioning people become so accustomed to suffering that dangerous choices begin to feel logical.

Athletes do this all the time.

They normalize pain. They minimize fatigue. They hide symptoms. They convince themselves that enduring discomfort is evidence of strength.

Sometimes it is. Other times, it is the very thing putting them in danger.

What They Found

The diagnosis was sobering.

I am currently being treated for a severe burden of pulmonary emboli, which means there is an extensive network of significant blood clots throughout both lungs, including the major pulmonary arteries responsible for moving blood through the lungs for oxygen exchange.

In simple terms, my lungs were not irritated. They were obstructed.

The imaging also showed an RV:LV ratio of 2.8, which means the right side of my heart was under substantial strain trying to force blood through those blockages. That is not a subtle finding. That is a serious marker of physiologic stress.

There was also evidence of a developing pulmonary infarct, meaning part of my lung was beginning to lose blood supply and sustain tissue injury.

One of the greatest concerns was whether there was also a clot sitting inside my heart, which would have changed the entire conversation and potentially required immediate intervention.

Thankfully, additional imaging brought some desperately needed good news.

The echocardiogram confirmed measurable strain on the right side of my heart, including enlargement and moderately reduced function because it has been working against the blockage in my lungs. That is serious and will require continued management, but the left side of my heart is functioning normally, my vital signs remain stable, and the current treatment plan continues to be aggressive anticoagulation with a heparin drip and close monitoring.

And perhaps most importantly:

There is no clot in my heart. No emergency surgery. No immediate procedural intervention.

And after a long stretch of uncertainty, yes—I can finally eat.

That may sound insignificant.

Trust me.

It is not.

The Loneliness of Emergency Decision-Making

One of the things I have thought about most over the last twenty-four hours has nothing to do with physiology.

It has to do with decisions.

I made the conscious decision to go to the hospital alone.

Not because I wanted drama. Not because I was trying to be heroic.

Because I knew, in all likelihood, I would be there alone for at least part of this process, and I needed clarity.

Almost immediately, I found myself emotionally triaging people. Who needs to know? Who can actually help? How much do I tell them? Do I protect people from information until I know more?

Am I being empathetic to their emotional reality, or am I being selfish by making those decisions unilaterally?

I still do not know if I handled that perfectly.

But I do know this:

Every person needs an emergency action plan. Not a vague assumption. An actual plan.

Who makes decisions if you cannot? Who has access to critical information? Who remains actionable under pressure? Who belongs in your circle when emotion must quickly give way to execution?

Parents need this. Adults need this. Athletes need families who have thought this through.

Emergencies are not just medical events. They are decision-making events. And indecision is its own form of vulnerability.

The Lesson

I am sharing this because I know exactly how high performers think.

I have spent more than twenty years helping athletes identify injury risk, improve durability, restore performance, and navigate return-to-play decisions. And yet when it came to my own physiology, I behaved exactly like the athlete who assumes toughness will solve everything.

That should tell you something.

Not every symptom means catastrophe. A cough does not mean pulmonary embolism. Fatigue does not always signal crisis. Shortness of breath can have many explanations.

But unexplained physiological changes deserve respect. Persistent fatigue deserves respect. Chest discomfort deserves respect. Swelling deserves respect. A dramatic drop in physical capacity deserves respect. That strange internal voice that tells you something is not right deserves respect.

Your body whispers before it screams.

The sixth sense is real.

The problem is that high performers often become exceptionally skilled at ignoring it.

Final Thought

I woke up today.

That sentence carries a different kind of weight now. Because there was a very real possibility that I would not.

I am not done being a father. I am not done coaching. I am not done building Stadium Performance. I am not done helping athletes navigate performance, injury, recovery, and life.

And I am certainly not done changing lives.

But if this experience does anything beyond changing mine, I hope it forces one athlete, one parent, one coach, or one stubborn adult to rethink what toughness actually means.

Because discipline is powerful. Resilience is powerful. Mental toughness is powerful.

But none of them make you immune to biology.

And biology always keeps score.