Meghan Braffet and Peter Hess have a lot in common.
Both are redshirt juniors who star on their respective Terrapin cross country teams. Braffet has been the Terps’ top finisher in all three women’s competitions so far, while Hess has been the first Terp to cross the finish line at two of the three men’s events.
But what really sets these two apart is the eerie coincidence that both Braffet and Hess suffered from during their college careers – mononucleosis. And though they were forced to miss significant time, both came out of the experience better than before they got sick.
After competing in just two collegiate competitions in the fall of 2003, Braffet, then a freshman, knew something was wrong. She had felt fatigued for most of the summer and was disappointed with her performances in those first competitions. She decided to go to the doctor, where she was diagnosed with mono.
“I was just completely exhausted,” Braffet said. “Practices killed, easy runs did not feel easy. It was bad. I knew something was wrong.”
Braffet, who was also found to be suffering from anemia at the time, had been competing despite her illness, but was forced to sit out the rest of the season and was given a medical redshirt. After a month of hardly any activity, she slowly began to start training again in order to get ready for the next season. After starting with some light miles, Braffet slowly increased her workload each week.
“I was actually pretty happy I had it,” Braffet said. “I was running so bad, it was just good to have an excuse.”
For Hess, it was somewhat different.
Hess said he was in the best shape of his life during the summer of 2005. He was coming off a sophomore season in which he had earned All Mid-Atlantic honors. As a freshman, he was named ACC Freshman of the Year.
Then, after a couple of sub-par training runs, he woke up at 2 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2005 with a 102-degree fever and a variety of other symptoms. After a trip to the emergency room and a series of tests, he was told that he, too, had contracted mono.
“Mono is a horrible experience,” Hess said. “I had days where I slept 18 hours a day … It was totally mind, body and soul draining.”
Hess had an especially bad case of mono, and he said it took more than two months before he could do anything to get him ready to train again.
“I had to take 10 to 12 weeks off,” Hess said. “I slowly got back into it one mile at a time … It almost felt like I was starting over.”
After the original 10 to 12 weeks, it took Hess another two months before he could get into training shape, and an additional month before he was able to run competitively. He was forced to sit out his entire junior season and was also given a medical redshirt.
Dr. Steve Fahey of the Sports Medicine Division at the University’s Health Center estimated that approximately one in 100 to one in 500 students will contract mono while they are in college.
Fahey said the main symptoms of the disease are swollen glands, fever and a sore throat, followed by a period of fatigue. Some patients also have difficulty swallowing which could lead to dehydration. The average case, like Braffet’s, lasts for about a month, but in some cases, such as Hess’s, a patient could feel sick and fatigued for two to four months.
Fahey said it is especially difficult for a distance runner to return from mono because of the activity he or she must sustain for a long period of time.
“Your body’s protein factories are so busy making antibodies to fight the infection, it doesn’t have as much spare energy to build the muscle you need to perform as an athlete,” Fahey said.
Another setback athletes returning from mono face is that while infected, their spleen becomes swollen and is in danger of rupturing if it is hit. Fahey said that while the danger would be greater for an athlete in a contact sport, a cross country runner could still rupture a swollen spleen by running on hard surfaces, or even by falling.
“The difficult decision a doctor has to make is to try to determine in the athlete who feels well enough to get back into sports, is if his spleen is still swollen enough that he may be in danger if he returns,” Fahey said.
For this reason, Fahey stressed that an athlete recovering from mono must be cleared by a doctor before returning to his or her sport.
After returning for a successful redshirt freshman season in 2004, Braffet missed the first four competitions last year due to a stress reaction.
Both Braffet and Hess are at full strength this season, and they are both happy to be back.
“I’ve had a lot of injuries, but every time I got over them I was a lot better than I was before,” Braffet said.
“It feels good getting on the line competing,” Hess said.
Braffet has placed second, third and fifth overall in her team’s first three competitions of 2006, respectively. She was named ACC Cross Country Performer of the Week after her third-place finish at the Penn State Spiked Shoe Invitational on Sept. 23.
“She’s just plain tough,” said Michael Garrison, head coach of the men’s and women’s teams. “She has a knack to really just keep trying to run fast.”
Hess finished 17th overall in the first two competitions of this season, and finished 21st overall last weekend.
Looking to the future, Braffet and Hess both have aspirations of competing in the NCAA Championships and being named All-Americans. Both returned to action with their teams on Oct. 14 at the Chile Pepper Invitational in Fayetteville, Ark.
“Sports are about getting out there, working hard … and showing the world what you can do,” Hess said. “Just getting back out there and competing feels great.”
“I’m competitive,” Braffet said. “I like to beat people.”
Contact reporter Greg Schimmel at sports@dbk.umd.edu.
