Chad Lundquist/Nevada Appeal Catcher, Aaron Greer, sits on the baseball field at WNCC on Wednesday.
Aaron Greer is Western Nevada Community College's Lou Gehrig. He is lucky to be alive.
Greer had been playing with numerous blood clots in his right leg and five blood clots in his lungs. Greer's condition is considered to be fatal most of the time and ironically a prominent female student-athlete died of virtually the same condition just two days before Greer learned about his status.
University of Arizona women's basketball star Shawntinice Polk died of one blood clot in the lung just two days before Greer found out about his condition.
"It took a little while, but it settled in what they were telling me," said Greer about how he reacted to his condition.
Greer had been playing and living with numerous blood clots in his leg and lungs for at least two weeks.
"If it was going to be fatal, it would have been two weeks ago," said Greer about what medical personnel told him.
"That was kind of nerve wracking there," said Greer in an understatement about how serious his condition was.
Greer, a catcher who was taken in last summer's Major League draft, played with the condition last month when the WNCC baseball team faced the Reno Astros at Reno's Moana Stadium.
After a game on Saturday against the Astros, he began to feel chest pains and felt pain all the way from his left side of his ribs to his back. After taking a couple of days off he felt the same pain, but this time on the right side of his ribs all the way to his back.
He originally thought the pain could have been a pulled muscle. But after another day off, he felt the pain isolated in the right side of his back and then the left side of his back.
Greer went to the Carson-Tahoe Hospital emergency room. The original diagnosis was he had a rib partially out of place and inflamed muscles.
But then he felt a tremendous amount of cramping in his right calf. He originally thought it was just a Charley Horse.
He was told if he began to feel a fever and chills that he should come back in. He felt the fever and chills.
On his second trip to Carson-Tahoe Hospital, he was able to undergo a chest X-ray. But before the X-ray could be taken, Greer almost blacked out and was dripping in sweat. After an ultrasound, his condition was discovered.
"They have no explanation for why it happened," said Greer, adding there's no history of the condition in his family.
Greer is now taking blood thinners and may have to take the medication for the next six months - or the rest of his life. Greer is counting on six months.
Greer is aiming to return during WNCC's first regular season when the Wildcats play Lane Community College from Eugene, Ore., in late February and early March. The reason - Greer is from Eugene.
Even if he isn't off the blood thinners, Greer could still decided to play, but would risk internal bleeding if he was hit in the chest, abdomine or head.
"It's going to come down to my decision whether I'm willing to take a risk or not," Greer said. But Greer is countin on being off the blood thinners by then.
Greer is also determined to reach his ultimate dream of reaching the Major Leagues. "Oh definitely if anything this just made me want it even more," said Greer about making the Major Leagues. "It's added fuel to the fire."
