Heat, Stress and MS: a Tough NFL Combine

SANTA CLARA, Calif. —  I don’t live with it every day, so in preparation for my interview with San Francisco 49er offensive lineman Khiawatha Downey, I asked my sister in Chicago, the one with MS, if she could tell me a little about it.

“Stress will do you in,” she said, which makes me wonder why she’s such a passionate Cub fan. “Heat is also notorious for taking its toll on you, and if you overdo anything, it’ll put you in bed for three days.”

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IT IS Thursday, the first day of training camp here, and time for the 49ers’ conditioning test on a warm afternoon. Downey, 6 feet 4 and 320 pounds, is fresh off the airplane after a four-hour flight from his home in Pittsburgh. He has been preparing himself for this.

The night before, he rolled up his pants -- as he will continue to do every week -- and stuck a needle in his thigh, injecting himself with Avonex. The drug is designed to inhibit the advancement of multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord.

A little more than four years ago when he was first diagnosed with MS, he would inject himself after a Saturday football game, and it would be Wednesday or Thursday before he had the energy to do anything. But he has learned, he said, “mind over matter -- it works,” and so he no longer finds himself fatigued after the injections.

He has pills for the headaches, and although it still takes hours before his aching body allows him to fall asleep after an injection, here he is -- running, and running as hard as the 49ers demand without missing a step.

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IN THE next few weeks, the notorious summer heat will be turned up on Downey, and as a non-drafted rookie, he’ll be asked to handle the stress that comes with being a longshot and trying to land a roster spot.

There will be two-a-day practices, the NFL’s traditional way of overdoing it, and while that might put most of us -- MS or not -- in bed for the next three days, Downey will be asked to pick it up if he wants to win a job.

“I have a big X on my chest,” he said. “I know they’re looking at me and wondering how hard is he willing to push himself, how hard can he push himself. They’ll be looking for the fatigue. I don’t have it, no more than everyone else out here, but they don’t know that yet. I am symptom free of MS.”

No one can recall another player beginning a NFL career after being diagnosed with the disease, and now some will watch and wonder whether he’s going to have an attack, or MS episode.

“I’ll be retired by then,” he said with a laugh. “Sure, I’m scared about the future, but I’ll worry about that when I get there.”

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KHIAWATHA, WHICH means, “The Maker of Many Rivers,” was named by his grandmother, who must have known what was coming. Downey played two years at the University of Pittsburgh, injured a shoulder, underwent medical tests and then was sent to a neurologist.

“They brought out this needle, bigger than that pen in your hand, and told me they were going to put it in my back to take some fluid,” he said. “Let me tell you, they won’t be doing that again.”

A short time later, his mother showed up unannounced and told her son he had MS. “It was hard on her,” he recalled. “She didn’t want to tell her son something like that because she’s a registered nurse. She knew what it could do to you.

“I didn’t even know what MS stood for, and I was thinking radiation, chemo, they’re going to amputate a leg and I’m going to die. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose my life over something I didn’t have any control of.”

He began using marijuana, honest to admit now that it wasn’t just because someone had told him he had MS. “I was a kid, I was messing around and I got caught, and not just once,” he said, and as a result, Pitt suspended him.

That could have been the end of this football story, but he got a second chance, attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Division II school, and caught the attention of NFL scouts.

He also began researching MS. “It’s not curable, but it’s also not fatal,” he said. “On TV, they only show you the worst cases, but you can live a long life without symptoms. I know some people have to use a walker by age 45, but I don’t think that’ll happen to me. I pray a lot, and I have a lot of faith that I’ll be just fine.”

He has already pulled off a miracle grabbing a seat in an NFL locker room. A top neurologist sent letters to every team vouching for Downey’s good health, and no one responded positively. Downey said, “It was like the NFL thought I had leprosy.”

The 49ers were the only team to offer a tryout after his agent pounded on doors, and after Downey agreed to sign a medical waiver to free the team from liability related to MS.

“I consider myself very lucky,” he said. “I’m going to be playing football.”

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THE SISTER in Chicago has had MS for 14 years, and remains a working mother with two children. Her two nieces, the one who can’t get a date and the one who settled for the Grocery Store Bagger, will be walking in the three-day MS Challenge Walk in September on her behalf.

All three intend to take an interest now in the 49ers.

“I’ll be just like Joe Namath in the white shoes,” Downey said. “There’s the MS guy, which is fine by me. Maybe I can help some young kid out there who has serious symptoms and who thinks life is over. It’d be nice if he could look over at me, and say, ‘If that guy can run around the football field, maybe there’s something more I can still do with my life.’ That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?”

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.