Heart condition weighed heavily on Bok lock Lood de Jager

He felt he was suffocating, Springbok lock Lood de Jager recalls when the effects of pericarditis showed up during a training session in Buenos Aires in 2023.

After a long rest De Jager, who was cruelly ruled out of the Rugby World Cup on the eve of the squad’s announcement, is on the comeback trail with the Panasonic Saitama Wild Knights outside Tokyo.

Though he did not play for five months, De Jager counts himself fortunate as his condition was initially misdiagnosed.

“I was very pleased,” he said from Tokyo, where he is playing in Japan Rugby League One. His tale could have been far more harrowing had the Bok medical staff not acted with caution.

“Credit to the Springbok medical staff. It was misdiagnosed in Argentina. I went for scans there because that is where I picked up the issue. They didn’t perform an MRI.

“The doctor said let’s make sure when we get back to SA that we didn’t miss something. Then they picked up the pericarditis (inflammation of the casing around the heart). I’m very thankful. It could have ended terribly.”

His condition, which is a build-up of fluid around the heart, was initially shrouded in mystery. Then Bok coach Jacques Nienaber, when the full extent of De Jager’s affliction was yet to be determined, said the player felt “a bit chesty” when explaining the lock’s absence from the team sheet against Argentina.

“I had a viral infection I wasn’t aware of,” De Jager said. “I didn’t have any fever. I had a few symptoms but kept training and that put the heart under more pressure. Then I ended up with the fluid around the heart.

“I developed symptoms that were worrying in a training session before the Argentina Test in Buenos Aires. It was on the Monday. Five minutes in, it felt like someone was sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. There was pressure on my chest and it felt like I was suffocating. I walked off the field and told the doctor something was not right.

“Then I did the scans but they did not pick up the pericarditis. I stayed in my room.”

When he returned to SA, he went for an MRI which unmasked the condition. His road to recovery was laborious, more than anything he had to exercise patience.

“If you injure a knee or a shoulder you can still train unaffected parts of the body. You can gym and cardio. With this, it was full stop. To get back I felt horrendous the first few weeks. It was bad. I was completely out of shape.

“If you’ve played professionally for 10 years, your body gets used to certain things. Luckily I got it back quicker than I thought I would.”