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Better Safe Than Sorry

How Detroit Tigers Shortstop Carlos Guillen Learned to Listen to his Body

By Karen Buscemi

Carlos Guillen is no stranger to pain. In fact, it’s been a constant companion most of his professional life. During his career as shortstop for the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners, Guillen’s injuries read like a laundry list: shoulder, groin, knee and hamstring ailments that have knocked him out of the starting lineup, but never for long. In fact, he’s earned a well-deserved reputation as a guy who gives it 100%, even when his body is nowhere near that level.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that in July 2001, Guillen, then 25 and a Mariner, ignored signs that would have sent many people racing to the hospital emergency room.

Guillen says he began coughing up blood and feeling weak, and at night, he had fevers so intense he’d sweat profusely and have to change his clothes two or three times.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” says Guillen, who lives in Birmingham during the baseball season with his wife, Amelia, and their sons, Alfonso, 7, and Isaac, 4.

“I’d wash my face and go play baseball, and at night, I’d sleep in my bathroom, coughing up blood. I was really sick.”

When Guillen coughed up blood one day on the field before a game, his coaches sent him to the hospital. After a medical exam, Guillen was told it was just a nosebleed. Though Guillen didn’t agree with the diagnosis, he went back to playing baseball, still coughing up blood.

Guillen, who lives in his native Aragua, Venezuela during the off-season, went on that way for two and a half months, losing about 20 pounds along the way.

“I was so weak, I had no appetite. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep,” he says, noting that even his wife had no idea how sick he was. “But I wanted to play every day, because I was hurt the year before, and I didn’t want to be hurt. I didn’t want to miss the time playing baseball.”

One night, Guillen became so sick he could barely walk or talk. He called a friend to take him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis.

“I didn’t know what tuberculosis was,” Guillen says. “I know that they gave me a test during spring training for tuberculosis, and it came back negative.”

STRIKING BACK

Spread by coughing and sneezing, tuberculosis is a treatable respiratory disease that kills 1.6 million people a year worldwide.

“Tuberculosis is still prevalent, though we don’t often see it here in the U.S.,” says Michael Akkashian, M.D., of Oakwood Southshore Medical Center in Trenton (who did not treat Guillen). “Typically it’s not terribly hard to diagnose, especially with an X-ray.”

The ballplayer was quarantined for two weeks. His family was tested for TB during that time, but their results were negative. While Guillen was in quarantine, doctors told him he needed surgery to repair lung damage. “I said, ‘Do whatever you have to do.’ I thought I was going to die,” he says.

“Everybody thought I was going to die.”

For two days after the operation, Guillen says he was strapped to his hospital bed so he couldn’t move and pull out his stitches.

But five days after surgery, he was back at the ballpark, trying to field ground balls (Guillen says he could only take five ground balls before he’d feel dizzy and have to return to the dugout). Five days later, he was playing against the New York Yankees in game 1 of the American League Championships.

“I think it’s mental,” he says of being able to play such an important game so soon after surgery. “As soon as you get in the game and concentrate, you forget everything.”

Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland says he’s not surprised Guillen played that game.

“He accepts his responsibility, he’s got a contract, and if he’s got to play, that’s what he does,” says Leyland.

“If you wait until you feel 100% to play, you’re not going to play many games during the season.”

Guillen continued to recover by eating well and taking antibiotics every day for a year.

PLAYING THROUGH PAIN

Guillen, who joined the Tigers in 2004, is no stranger to pain: So far in 2007, he has missed four games with a groin strain and three games with a shoulder injury. Hamstring, knee and back injuries kept him out of action for parts of 2006. In 2005, he played only 87 games (in the 162- game schedule) because of knee and hamstring injuries. And in 2004, his season ended in September due to an injury that led to surgery on his right knee.

“Between baseball and tuberculosis, it’s amazing,” Tigers right fielder Magglio Ordonez says of Guillen, his close friend. “He’s had a lot of injuries and comes back stronger. He’s a hell of a player.”

Tigers second baseman Placido Polanco agrees. “To come out and play shortstop every day with the intensity that he does is amazing,” he says.

Akkashian notes that men and women should be in tune with their bodies and pay attention to signs of illness. He adds that everyone older than 30 should undergo an annual physical.

“If there is a problem, a lot of men are afraid of what they may find out, so they put it off,” he says.

Though Guillen admits he’s “still bad” when it comes to playing through injury and illness, he now gets a checkup every six months. “We think we’re strong enough to not go to a doctor,” he says. “We can handle it – pains, headache, whatever. We don’t pay attention. We don’t know when we’re really sick.”