Notre Dame’s Terry Hanratty And David Lacey Speak About Overcoming COVID-19
While some optimism is beginning to grow about the United States gradually opening up the economy and colleges possibly returning to on-campus classes this August, two members of the Fighting Irish football family have pleas to proceed with immense caution.
Both Terry Hanratty, Notre Dame’s starting quarterback from 1966-68, a second-round pick and an eight-year NFL veteran who won two Super Bowl rings at Pittsburgh, and David Lacey, father of sophomore nose tackle Jacob Lacey, had harrowing battles with the virus this spring that threatened their lives.
Both appeared on Notre Dame’s fund-raising “The Fight” on Tuesday to share their stories with reporters Terry McFadden and Jack Nolan.
For Hanratty it occurred last month, shortly after getting his B-12 vitamin shot that he has taken every three weeks the past five years. One evening after an injection, he was feeling particularly ill and fatigued. When it became worse the next day, his doctor recommended getting tested to see if he had the coronavirus.
“That’s not a pleasant thing to go through, believe me,” Hanratty said of the test.
As a precaution, Hanratty’s doctor prescribed medication in advance, but once he went back home, the symptoms worsened, especially a fever.
When Hanratty called his doctor on a Monday morning, she told him to come by the office — pajamas and all — but remain in the car. His temperature was up to 103.1, and his oxygen level had gone from what was a normal 96 to a more alarming 85.
“She called the ambulance right there and said, ‘You’re going to the hospital!’ ” recalled Hanratty, who had previously worked in New York City but resided in Connecticut and was taken to Norwalk (Conn.) Hospital.
A six-day stay there had him in complete isolation other than with his doctor and attending nurse, but he described the healthcare workers there “spectacular.”
At age 72, going through double pneumonia and having given up smoking only three years earlier at the urging of daughter Erin (son Conor played along Notre Dame’s offensive line from 2011-14), Hanratty was in a high-risk group.
“The biggest thing was the fever,” he said. “They had four blankets on me and I was lying in bed shivering. Even if I was able to walk, I couldn’t have walked out of my room. … It was a lonely area, but it was an area where you wanted to be because you did not want to infect anybody else.”
The combination of getting started on the medication in the virus’ infancy stage, quitting smoking a few years earlier and the quick action to get to the hospital helped save him.
Hanratty lost 16 pounds during his stay — “a great diet, but I don’t recommend it to anybody,” he joked — before getting transported back home in an ambulance. A second reality soon hit home when he realized he was too weak to walk the flight of stairs to his bedroom.
“They had to carry me up the steps to the room where they had the oxygen set up,” Hanratty said. “It’s a harrowing experience, it’s something you don’t want to go through, that’s for sure.”
Today he is ambulatory again and in good spirits, but remains highly wary.
“We’re getting nice weather now, people want to get outside, want to go to the beaches, want to have their parties, want to go to sporting events — you really have to stay away and stick with this thing,” Hanratty said. “We have this good comeback they’re talking about every day now on television. You really have to stay diligent about this and keep your distance, wear your mask, wear your gloves, because this is not going away anytime soon.
“Until we get a vaccine — which I don’t predict and I don’t think anybody predicts it’s going to be before January — we really have to be careful.”
A Father’s Scare
The father of Notre Dame sophomore nose tackle Jacob Lacey — one of three Notre Dame freshmen to see extensive action last season and not redshirt — David Lacey has been in the medical field the past 30 years. He received his degree in nursing and was also involved with pharmaceuticals and lab work in cardiovascular care.
On the morning of March 16, he instantly recognized something was amiss when he awoke. He had a low-grade fever (100.4) for starters — a rarity for him — but the headache was piercing and his eyeballs hurt like never before when he rubbed them.
He quarantined himself in his basement, and whenever the chills returned he would take a Tylenol a few times a day and feel better.
“The thing about this disease, it tricks you and it makes you lay down,” Lacey said. “And when you lay down you feel fine. But when I would get up, that’s when I would have some respiratory issues and I would isolate myself in the basement for those two weeks.”
By the second week he was beginning to lose his appetite, and two weeks after the initial symptoms, “I knew I was in trouble.”
On March 30, his life hung in the balance.
“As soon as I sat up, I lost my breath,” he continued. “When I stood up I got real dizzy, and when I took three steps up the stairs it felt like I had run a marathon.”
He had been to the emergency room two previous times but was told he was not sick enough to be admitted — “And I understood that.”
But on the third occasion when the medical staff took a CT angiography, he said the inflammatory markers were 10 times away from what was considered normal and “my lungs lit up like a Christmas tree.”
The prognosis was serious enough, per the medical staff, to where his life was in peril. Lacey made three quick calls to his brother, to Notre Dame defensive line coach Mike Elston and to his pastor.
To his brother it was a message to take care of the family should he pass. To Elston it was to watch over his son and “make sure that he graduates from Notre Dame.”
Today, he is thankful above else for faith, family and friends.
“I don’t know how anybody does it without God,” he said.
His sense of humor is back in full force too, especially with Jacob back home with the rest of the family since March and having completed his freshman year last week.
“The only thing I don’t appreciate is I forgot how much he eats,” Lacey said with a laugh. “My grocery bill is through the roof. I’ll be glad when he gets back to school so they can feed him.”
He has been awed by the work ethic Jacob maintains with his conditioning and lifting, including with fellow Kentucky native and fourth-year NFL player George Fant, a 322-pound offensive tackle for the New York Jets who started 24 games the past three years at Seattle. (Fant played at Western Kentucky in college.)
“[The virus] is not a Republican problem, it’s not a Democratic problem, black, white, rich, poor," the elder Lacey concluded. “This virus does not discriminate and it doesn’t care what you’re affiliated with.
“I can get a new house, I can get a new car. I can’t get another life.”
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