‘THAT NIGHT I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE’: T.R. WILLIAMS RECOUNTS HIS RECRUITMENT & RECOVERY FROM GUILLAIN-BARRÉ SYNDROME
BLACKSBURG, Va. –– T.R. Williams wanted to go to the University of Virginia, but not like this.
Not at UVA University Hospital. Not with numbness slowly spreading from his foot to his head. Not with paralysis that would keep him from talking or even moving a muscle, let alone pitching.
Pitching for Virginia Tech this coming spring, that is.
Williams, a Top 200 recruit in the 2021 class, according to Perfect Game, woke in the dead of night on Feb. 4 without feeling in his right foot. He tossed and turned, but kept telling himself the feeling would fade away.
“I went back to bed thinking it would go away, and I woke up and it was more numb,” said Williams, then a senior Hokies commit from Page County High School (Shenandoah, Va.), in an exclusive interview with 3304 Sports this week. “I went ahead and went to school, and I was kind of worried about it in the back of my mind.
“As the day went along, I got a lot more tired and started losing focus, and my eyes started hurting. When I would go to skip stuff with my eyes, they would kind of jitter a little bit up and down. And I’m thinking, well this is not good at all.”
When he got home from school that day, Williams couldn’t fall asleep, so he tried eating, but the pain still increased.
The next day, Feb. 6, was worse.
“I woke up, went to the mirror, smiled in the mirror and half of my face was completely numb,” Williams recalled. “I couldn’t move half my face when I smiled. So then my dad said we need to go to the emergency room.”
Williams and his father, Tim, headed to Sentara RMH Medical Center, where doctors initially diagnosed him with Bell’s Palsy and estimated a two-week recovery.
“At that point, my hands and my feet were numb, and I told [that to the doctors], and they said, ‘Well, we don’t really know about that. We just know that you have Bell’s Palsy. Here’s your medication,’” Williams continued.
Still, Williams’ condition didn’t improve. On Super Bowl Sunday, two days after his visit to RMH, he started seeing double, so his father again called his therapist, who recommended the Williamses visit UVA University Hospital for further testing.
“We headed over that night,” Williams said. “They ran all kinds of tests on me. I didn’t get in bed until about 4 or 5 a.m., and they still couldn’t figure out what I had. It seemed like a couple days until they said I had Guillain-Barré [Syndrome.]”
Unlike Bell’s Palsy, which can cause facial paralysis, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a much rarer disorder, can lead to more significant paralysis as the body’s immune system attacks its own nerves. In more severe cases, recovery can take years or lead to permanent nerve damage, according to the CDC.
Even with the correct diagnosis, Williams’ symptoms continued to worsen to a frightening degree.
“It seemed about every day the numbness was paralyzing me from my feet to my hands, up my body,” Williams started. “It eventually ran up through my legs and my torso; it ran up through my arms, up to my neck, up to my head; and then finally, I was paralyzed where I couldn’t even open my eyes. I was just lying in bed, could not move anything whatsoever.
“It would feel like you could move your body part. Like, in your head you were moving it, but in real life, you were not moving it whatsoever. It was just sitting still. It was definitely really confusing to me at first.”
At this point, any preoccupation with baseball disappeared as the Williamses focused on both keeping T.R. alive and in good spirits.
“The first week in the hospital, I was thinking, ‘This is going to be a little bump in the road. I’ll be here for a week. I’ll get out, and I’ll be perfectly fine,’ Williams said. “But as it got worse, I really just totally forgot about baseball and just focused on family.
“My dad was there, and he was really torn up about it. He said, ‘I just want you to live.’ He really just put everything into helping me and not really worrying about sports or anything. He kept telling me about stuff we were going to do after we got out of the hospital — go fishing and have a good time — just to keep me going.”
With his baseball dreams, Williams’ ability to speak also faded, so communication became a team effort between the doctors, Tim Williams and his son.
“I could talk for about a week, and then eventually, it was getting hard for me to breathe,” Williams said. “Then they put in a breathing tube, so I had to move my shoulders or move my head [to communicate,] but eventually, it started getting worse. I could only move my shoulders a little bit or just move my head a little bit — that would be it.
“If I had pain anywhere, my dad and the doctors would have to go from the bottom of my torso to the top of my torso. It would be like, ‘Does anything hurt below your hips?’ And I would shake my head no or move my shoulders. And then, “Does anything hurt about your hips?” And I would say yes, and they’d name all kinds of body parts until they could figure it out or they could give me medicine to make me feel better.”
“It was actually the worst night of my life,” Williams started, explaining the turning point in his recovery. “I was throwing up, still couldn’t move anything. And literally, I thought that night I thought I was gonna die. I would literally pray to God. I was like, ‘Please God, help me through this tough time right now. I really need your help.’ And from that morning on, everything progressed. I started feeling better real slow.
“[The doctors] started cutting down the settings on the ventilator, where they put a cap up over my trach, and I could start talking a little bit. And then eventually, I could start drinking thick liquids and eating. Eventually, I started getting a lot better, but I still was having trouble moving around my extremities a little bit and gaining strength back.”
Williams was then transferred to Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Va. for rehab. Within three days of arriving, Williams was able to pick up his legs out of his bed, which he said was “surprising,” and that he was happy with his progress. He called it the “push that got him over the hump” while he was rebuilding his strength.
“They kind of put me right into rehab when it seemed like I wasn’t ready for it, but they pushed me right on through it,” Williams said. “It did take time, but it really seemed like it was happening pretty quick once I got to rehab.”
At first, after regaining strength in his legs, Williams focused on recouping more basic motor skills — walking, holding and using his phone — but it didn’t take long before a baseball was back in his hands.
In a harness and with a therapist next to him, Williams would toss the ball to himself off a wall with his father watching. As the days passed and his strength improved, the trio moved outside and T.R. threw to his dad — the only visitor allowed with T.R. during both hospital stints due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“It made me feel on top of the world, once I could go outside and throw the baseball around with Dad,” Williams beamed with pride. “It was really a big thing for me and a huge thing for him, as well. All the stuff we’d been through. I wouldn’t be thinking — or he wouldn’t be thinking — I’d be throwing a baseball with him a month and a half after what I’d been through.”
Three years earlier, as a freshman oblivious to the perils of his eventual return to Charlottesville, T.R. Williams pitched in a tournament at UVa, the first step in his journey to Blacksburg.
“It was not a very good game at all,” said the southpaw now with a low-90s fastball to his name. “I really wanted to go to UVa at that time, so I was like, ‘Man, really screwed that one up.’ But on the way home, my coach was like, ‘Hey, Virginia Tech wants to talk.’
“And I was like, ‘Oh, Virginia Tech, uhh…’ because I really wanted to go to UVa. But I still talked to [the Tech coaches,] and they seemed really good on the phone. So, I was like, ‘Well, this could be an option.’ Then, after that, I played in Georgia, and I pitched a great game, and they were there to watch me. We were talking, and they gave me an offer, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s a really good offer, but I’m still probably going to hold out for now.’”
The staff kept in touch with Williams, and pitching coach Ryan Fecteau scouted the crafty left-hander a week later in Lake Point, Ga.
“I pitched really great, and so before I even came off the field, my coach let my dad know, ‘Hey, Virginia Tech wants me to call them once I get in the car.’ And so, we hurry up and rush to the car and got on the phone with [head coach John Szefc] and we talked to [him.] [He] gave me an offer more than what it was before, and so then I was like, ‘I’ll take it.’ And so we decided on leaving Georgia and going straight to Virginia Tech and visiting it.”
By then, Williams had spoken with UVa coaches by then, too, but those conversions weren’t as fruitful.
“We talked to UVa, too, and it kind of just turned us off after being on the phone with them,” Williams said. “Talking to Virginia Tech, the more we talked, a greater relationship was built. I liked being on the phone with the coaches, they were really great guys, and we could talk about literally anything other than baseball. And so when I came here to visit, I saw all the facilities and the whole campus, and I just fell in love with it.”
The Cavaliers’ visit to English Field last spring represented the confluence of Williams’ past, present and future, and the rowdy crowd left a serious impression on the young recruit.
“When I came here and watched them against UVa, the fans were really into the game every inning. I love that stuff, as a pitcher,” Williams recounted. “Striking people out, they’re cheering, doing the ‘left, right, left, right’ as they walk to the dugout. I really love that stuff.”
He’s settled into campus life, calling Virginia Tech “home” just a month into his freshman year, and has already begun to reap the rewards of a collegiate strength and conditioning program.
“Since I’ve got here, I’ve actually gone from a 23-inch vertical to a 30-inch vertical now, so I’m getting a lot stronger,” Williams added. “It’s definitely making me a better player. I can tell the ball is flying out of my hand a lot better. Running, I’m a lot more explosive.”
Still throwing bullpens, Williams won’t play in Friday’s Fall Ball game against the Ontario Blue Jays, but he “just can’t wait to play in front of fans.”
Those fans will be eager to see who steps into the void left by a quartet of now-professional pitchers — Shane Connolly, Chris Gerard, Anthony Simonelli and Peyton Alford — Tech’s starting rotation and top bullpen arm from a year ago.
But healthy, stronger and confident, Williams is ready to go.
“I’m going to bring a mix of things — different moves, different slots, different deliveries — so it should be a show out there.”
