The fact that Wartburg senior defensive lineman, Matt Tschetter, was able to return from the Intensive Care Unit to the Knights’ starting lineup is impressive. Even more impressive is the fact that he accomplished this in only four months after dropping 70 pounds in the month he spent in the hospital due to what doctors eventually diagnosed as an internal bacterial infection in his esophagus.

Tschetter was the team’s sixth-leading tackler and led the Knights in sacks in 2010 and earned First-team All-Iowa Conference honors on a squad that went 10-1 last season.

One morning last March, the Milford, Iowa woke up and wasn’t feeling great, so his Wartburg roommate drove him to the ER.

“I went to the Waverly Health Center and they ran some tests and thought I had the stomach flu,” said Tschetter. “I was dehydrated as I had been throwing up a lot, so they told me to go home and get some rest. My mom came and drove me home to Milford, which is when my chest started hurting pretty bad.”

When her son’s chest pain intensified, Karen Tschetter said she took Matt to the hospital in Spirit Lake. Doctors there thought it was some kind of infectious disease, but they couldn’t pin-point the exact problem.

When the chest pains continued, Matt was transported to the Sioux Falls, S.D. hospital, where he was examined by infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and kidney doctors. The medical staff discovered fluid and food were draining into Tschetter’s chest cavity where the pain was occurring, but they didn’t know how or why this was happening.

“Our family enjoys the TV show ‘House’, and we all felt like we were in an episode due the number of doctors who saw Matt while trying to find the cause of his pain,” Karen commented.

“In Sioux Falls, they ran more specialized tests and thought it was pneumonia at first,” said Matt.

Doctors placed him in the Intensive Care Unit on a pump that delivered medication every eight minutes.

“He was in much more pain than we realized, as he would ask us to wake him up so he could be sure to get his medicine,” his mother said.

During his nine days in the ICU, Matt got worse. “His blood pressure dropped, and his kidneys and liver looked pretty bad,” said Karen. “They tested the fluid around his heart which checked out fine, but when they tested the fluid around his chest cavity, they found the bacteria.”

As fate would have it, just days before all of this began, Karen had talked with a lady who mentioned that she had torn her esophagus from throwing up. Karen asked the doctor if this might have happened to her son and he said, “no, but we’ll check.”

Matt underwent surgery to remove the bacteria and fluid that had leaked into his system. Surgeons had to break his sternum to open his chest cavity and during the surgery, they discovered a pin-size hole in his esophagus, which was patched with a steint.

While Matt was unconscious and on a respirator for five days, his Grossmann Hall roommates traveled to Sioux Falls for a visit.

“Although they weren’t able to talk to Matt, it meant a great deal to us that they were there,” Karen commented. “The coaches and the Residential Life people at Wartburg kept in close contact and were of great support to us during this time.”

“Our main concern throughout this ordeal was Matt’s overall health and well-being,” said head coach Rick Willis. “We weren’t sure whether he’d be able to play football again which wasn’t something we were thinking about when he was fighting for his life in April.”

When Matt woke up, he had a big scar on his chest and many tubes running in and out of his body to finish clearing up the infection.

“The medical staff commented that they had never seen a patient with that many chest tubes (six),” said his father, Scott. “They removed a total of three liters of fluid from his lungs, two from one side and one from the other, plus the drainage from the bacteria as he was basically drowning from all the fluids in his system.”

“When I woke up they asked me all sorts of questions like, ‘Do you know where you are?’ which I did, but then they asked me what date it was and I guessed April 4,” Matt said. “They said it’s April 14^th.”

“My dad said my jaw dropped and my facial expression was enormous shock. That was the first time I realized how serious this was.”

Then, the recovery and rehabilitation process began. Matt was able to go for walks around the hospital with his parents, taking his IVs and drainage tubes with him.

“Being in the hospital that long allows for a lot of thinking time,” he said. “I was able to reflect on a lot of things.  I remember thinking that getting back into the routine of going to class would be awesome.”

Matt returned home the day before Easter. His parents learned how to administer IVs at home; otherwise, he would have been in the hospital for another week.

When the steint was removed, he started to feel a lot better and was able to eat more regular foods.

He returned to campus for part of May Term before heading home for a summer internship at a fitness facility.

Even after dropping from 240 to 170 pounds during his ordeal, preparing to return as a starter on the defensive line was another item on Matt’s summer to-do list.

“When I was in the hospital, I asked the doctors, I’ll still be able to play football right?” he said. “They said, ‘We’ll see how everything heals up.’ Once I got past the medical things and got home, people asked me if playing college football was something I still wanted to do, which of course it was.”

Matt, a Fitness Management major, had an internship at a fitness facility. His supervisor was aware of what had transpired but also to the fact that Matt was determined to return as a starter in the defensive line for the Orange and Black.

“The doctor’s main concern in getting back into football was that they had to break my sternum to open my chest, and they treated it as a broken bone” he said. “My main concern was getting that healed before doing strenuous activity. I had a weight restriction for quite a while only lifting 40-50 lbs. going into June.

“My internship supervisor helped me a great deal with some of the work outs, as I had to re-learn how to breathe while walking and jogging, and then I was able to start on body weight movement to get my muscles back in tone,” he continued. “After that, I went on my own doing the off-season lifting plans and mixing that with some running work. It was definitely frustrating because I could look at my weight sheets and saw that I wasn’t anywhere close to where I had been last summer or to where I should be on these off-season plans.”

This is where he began to doubt if returning for his senior season on the football field was obtainable. “That’s when I had the most doubt of am I going to be able to do this?” Matt said. “My internship supervisor told me that the human body is a pretty amazing thing and you’ll be pretty surprised, even if you can’t come back and play, as to how far you’re going to come. I kept that in mind and had to leave the negative thoughts out of my head.”

Soon after, Matt noticed people saying he had “started to get more color in his face and his muscles were filling out again.”

He felt confident coming into the August. While he wasn’t back to his spring body weight, he had been able to put on some pounds.

When Matt reported to Waverly, he was sent to the Athletic Training office where he was fitted into an Evo Shield to further protect his chest. “It’s kind of a DriFit shirt with a chest plate that goes into it and when reacts with the air, it molds to my chest,” he said. “It does a really good job and feels a lot more confident when going for a hit.

“The first couple practices I was a little timid before getting the first few hits out of the way,” he continued. “The chest plate definitely helped calm my nerves. The coaches did a great job of easing me back into football, so that helped too.”

“The way he came back in August and the way he has performed through our seven games this season from where he was in May is probably the most amazing thing I’ve seen on any of the teams I’ve been associated with,” commented Willis. “Clearly, this is a real testament to Matt and his determination and toughness.”

When Matt ran onto the field for the season opener against Monmouth College, he said he “got chills as I had come so far in such a short amount of time. I was surprised at myself that I could do this. It was an awesome feeling. I thought back to when I was in the hospital and wished I could be normal and go out there and play and it was a good feeling.”

While his parents weren’t able to attend the game, his mom received a lot of text messages from fellow players’ mothers telling her how Matt was doing. When Karen and Scott saw Matt play in the home opener against Gustavus a week later, “we were all pretty emotional,” his mom said.

“Even if he would have been standing on the sidelines in his uniform top and jeans I would have been thrilled,” said Scott. “We were pretty proud of the fact that he was a member of the starting lineup that night.”

Both of Tschetter’s parents are Wartburg alums and are very happy their son chose to attend the same college. “His journey to attend Wartburg was also largely driven by the coaching staff recruiting him to play” said Karen.

Matt echoed her thoughts. “Going through the recruiting process, I knew I wanted to play football and had known about Wartburg as both of my parents are alums. Then, the Knights started recruiting me and I made a list of pros and cons and Wartburg definitely stood out as they wanted me to go there, it had awesome facilities, great professors and the coaches were second to none as well.”

Matt is thrilled to be back as a member of the Knights squad and confident about his future.

“In one of my checkups, the doctors said they don’t know how or why this happened, but it probably won’t happen again,” he said. “For a guy of my age to have a hole in the esophagus is pretty impossible.

“I’ve made some really good friends with the coaches and players in the everyday grind of things,” he continued. “Being a senior, it’s a kind of a different role that you only get once and I like being a role model for the younger guys.”

“Matt’s presence this year provides a great example of leadership and I’m sure has caused him to have a deeper appreciation of this opportunity,” said Willis.

Matt will graduate in May and is still working on his after-graduation plans. “I’ve thought about getting into coaching or being a personal trainer,” he said. “My dad is a college coach (volleyball at Iowa Lakes Community College) and I really think coaching really influences a young person and being a part of their life is a pretty cool thing.”

Matt has started all seven games for the Knights that are 5-2. He has 16 total tackles- with 10 solo tackles. He also ranks second on the team with 6.5 tackles for a loss of 37 yards and four sacks.