Thor Jozwiak laid in a hospital bed for five days with no inkling how his life would unfold. Thoughts raced through his mind faster than his heart had been beating.

“I’m never going to play again,” he thought. “I’m letting everyone down.”

His journey began with an irregular heartbeat in 2013. During summer conditioning workouts for South Florida, Jozwiak began to experience shortness of breath.

Just 20 years old, he began taking three different heart medications. They helped the offensive lineman continue through the summer, but when the more rigorous football practices began to pick up in the fall, things took a turn for the worse.

During training camp, Jozwiak collapsed on the practice field and was rushed to Tampa General Hospital. Medicine wouldn’t be enough if he wanted to continue playing football. He needed surgery for atrial fibrillation.

Two years later, the senior has made a full recovery. After returning to the field in 2014, Jozwiak is a starting offensive lineman this season for USF and is off all the heart medication that he took earlier in his career. On Saturday, he’ll run through the tunnel when the Bulls (1-3, 0-1 American Athletic) host Syracuse (3-1, 1-0 Atlantic Coast) at 3:30 at Raymond Jones Stadium.

“I was fortunate enough to come back and play the game that I love,” Jozwiak said.

But before, he said, it felt like he was having a heart attack.

“Like you were running a marathon laying down,” he said. “I’d be still and my heart was racing 130, 140 beats a minute … you feel exhausted when you’re not doing anything.”

The doctors went through Jozwiak’s femoral artery and up to his heart, he said, where they performed a 3-D mapping to locate the “electrical error” that was causing the heart to beat irregularly and cauterized the area that was misfiring.

The cardiac ablation procedure lasted more than seven and a half hours. Jozwiak missed the entire 2013 season and was placed on blood thinners for six months.

“Sometimes we seem to forget about how grateful we are to play the sport of football,” said sophomore running back Marlon Mack, who ran behind Jozwiak for a 1,000 yard season in 2014.

Staring up at the hospital ceiling, Jozwiak tried to picture a reality without the sport he had grown up with. A sport his father, Brian Jozwiak, also played in a career that took him through West Virginia and to the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL.

“I was only 20,” Jozwiak said, “and here I am thinking that my whole career is done and I’ll never be able to play football again.”

Jozwiak feels healthy in his 6-foot-4, 318-pound frame. His favorite part of being back, he said, are the early morning practices he worried would be gone forever.

It’s why Jozwiak is such an inspiration in the Bulls’ huddles.

He sat in the hospital and wondered if he’d ever put on a helmet again. After his recovery, he makes sure his teammates don’t take anything for granted.

“To get a second chance and to come out and run out of that tunnel and get ready for battle with my brothers,” Jozwiak said, “it’s definitely an awesome feeling. And I was so lucky to have been granted this second chance.”

Published on October 8, 2015 at 12:58 pm

Contact Matt: mralex01@syr.edu