Patriots' Calvin Anderson talks battling near-death malaria

NFL

By Ryan Glasspiegel

Patriots offensive lineman Calvin Anderson expresses gratitude to the doctors and nurses who saved him from a potentially fatal bout of malaria.

Anderson, now 28, contracted the disease after taking a charity trip to Nigeria last summer and at one point was given a 50-50 chance of survival.

“I'm grateful to this staff,” Anderson told the Boston Globe on Thursday as he returned to Newton-Wellesley Hospital to thank caregivers for caring for him during the week he was hospitalized.

“I recognize their faces and I think back to the first time I saw some of them, and I was in a much different mental state. But I'm really, really grateful that they were able to get me from where I was [and] I feel good. »

Anderson, now in his second year in New England, credited his wife, Sherée, who accompanied him on the Africa trip, for urging him to see a doctor when he woke up one morning last July with a fever of 105 degrees – and not giving in when he sought to rest.

“I thought, 'We have training camp coming up.' I don't have time to be sick,” he said. “I told my wife I was going back to sleep. 'I'm going to sleep. I'll be fine.'

“But luckily she trusted her intuition. I wouldn't be here if she didn't.

Anderson spent his first three years in the NFL with the Broncos.

He was able to stave off his illness with enough time to return to the field last season, as he appeared in five games for New England with two starts.

It was a far cry from his time in the hospital, where he feared for his life.

“There was one night in the hospital when I told my wife that I didn't know if I was going to make it until the next day. The fever is so bad that it’s hard to think beyond what you’re feeling in the moment,” Anderson said. “But I managed to get here, got healthy again and am now a much stronger and more resilient person.

“So the truth is, I survived all of that, and I’m grateful that I did.”