Phil Zerante says he’s a lucky guy.
It’s hard at first to understand why. The Lake Park senior, after all, not only has lupus, a disease a teenage male gets about as often as he skips dessert, but he also has a form of it so severe he has done business with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
He has had to endure chemotherapy, swallow pills by the handful and treat the sun almost like he’s a vampire rather than a kid who won’t turn 18 until late October.
For Zerante, though, good fortune is a simple proposition, as simple as pulling on a helmet and shoulder pads, which somehow, some way, he is once again doing after missing the 2003 season because of his disease and a gruesome injury.
His return to the sport he loves above almost all else may not be quite a miracle. It is, however, a triumph of will and work ethic by a running back whose outlook is so positive that if a swarm of bees attacked him, he no doubt would dwell on the sweetness of honey.
“It wasn’t my fault I had lupus,” he said, “but it was my responsibility how I reacted to it.”
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According to the Lupus Foundation of America, Inc., Web site, lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which a person’s immune system attacks his or her own tissue and organs, including the joints, skin and kidneys.
The foundation estimates that 1.5 million Americans have a form of the disease, which lacks a known cause. It is usually a mild disorder and occurs 10 to 15 times more frequently among adult females than among adult males.
Zerante started to show signs of the disease during his freshman year, usually rashes and joint pain and swelling that he, his parents and his doctor attributed to weightlifting or allergies. By the winter of his sophomore year, though, those symptoms worsened, and on a spring break trip to Mexico, Zerante also developed severe sunburn, followed by fatigue and weight loss.
Specialists said he had lupus. Zerante hoped it was a mild version but began to realize otherwise when Marisa Klein-Gitelman, a pediatric rheumatologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, confirmed that he needed a kidney biopsy.
According to Klein-Gitelman, the biopsy, which took place in July 2003, revealed that Zerante had class IV diffuse proliferative glomerulonephritis, a serious kidney disease that could lead to kidney failure without aggressive treatment. Fortunately, doctors had caught it early.
The diagnosis shook Zerante and his parents, George and Judy, but almost all he could think about was football. He had loved the sport for years, and he played it well enough as a sophomore that Lake Park coach Andy Livingston had promoted him to the varsity for the 2002 state playoffs.
Zerante knew his football career was in jeopardy, but he was confident he would still get back on the field.
“It was a mantra I had,” he said. “`Don’t fear what you can’t control.'”
By early last August he was getting weekly two-hour infusions of a potent immunosuppressive drug and had received his first monthly seven-hour chemotherapy treatment, which also suppressed his immune system. Chemotherapy left him tired and nauseous.
That, however, didn’t stop him from resuming weightlifting or begging his doctor to let him go out for football.
Klein-Gitelman had reservations about allowing it. Excessive exposure to the sun could cause a flare-up of the disease, and she wasn’t certain how he’d tolerate the bumps and bruises of football because someone with his condition rarely has played it.
Exercise, however, can benefit a lupus patient, and Zerante’s muscular and skeletal systems were solid. In the end, though, it was Zerante’s emotional well being that prompted Klein-Gitelman to let him play as long as he felt up to it.
“My personal philosophy with kids with these chronic diseases is we like them to lead as normal a life as they can and be very supportive of them to do all the things they like to do,” she said. “Phil, from Day 1, said, `Just tell me what I have to do, and I’ll do it so I can do what I want to do.’
“I don’t have too many kids say that to me, to be honest with you. But this is the most important thing in his life.”
Zerante showed up for preseason practice a year ago at about 150 pounds, 35 below his former weight. He sometimes felt too ill to last more than half a practice. Livingston still had to slow him down.
Zerante hoped to return to competition by mid-season, but those dreams crumbled during a preseason scrimmage when he was hit while planting his left foot on a running play and suffered a broken fibula and severely dislocated ankle.
“He was going north, and his foot was going east,” said Livingston, who had a 2, Zerante’s jersey number, painted in a corner of the end zone.
A surgeon put a plate, a rod and seven screws in Zerante’s leg. He missed a chemotherapy session, and the injury activated his immune system.
“To think after that I would play football again . . . I thought I would,” he said. “I don’t think anyone else did.”
Zerante was in a cast for eight weeks. Despite his ordeal, his toughest task was watching Lake Park reach the Class 8A semifinals without him.
“It was eating him alive,” his father said.
The result was a relentless drive to resume playing.
“I missed it so much,” Zerante said. “I knew I was going to play this year. Nothing would keep me out.”
Before the season ended he was working out daily at Lifetime Fitness in Bloomingdale, where he had a part-time job. At first, Zerante would maneuver from one weight machine to the next on crutches.
That caught the eye of personal trainer Kyle Mulvey, who helped Zerante devise a workout program tailored to his condition.
About that time, Zerante learned his name had been submitted to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants the wishes of kids with life-threatening medical conditions.
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His wish, to attend the NFL Pro Bowl game Feb. 8 in Honolulu, was approved. He met Bears star Brian Urlacher and got dozens of autographs.
“It was probably the greatest experience of my life,” he said.
A month later, Zerante developed shingles on his back and spent five days in Children’s Memorial Hospital.
In all, he missed about two months of school his junior year and needed at-home tutoring, though he maintained high honor roll grades.
In May, Zerante underwent surgery to have the hardware removed from his leg and began therapy to strengthen his ankle. This summer he began intense daily strength and conditioning sessions.
Once again Klein-Gitelman cleared Zerante to play football, and once again his parents allowed it.
“I know people will look at us like we’re crazy, but how do you stop something so important to him?” Judy Zerante said. “If the doctor says OK, how do we say, `No, you can’t.'”
Klein-Gitelman is so impressed by her patient’s resolve that she has asked him to mentor an 11-year-old athlete who has arthritis.
“Sometimes you see out of adversity people rise to the occasion in amazing ways,” she said. “Phil is one of those people.
“He just won’t let anything get in his way. He’s a bulldog.”
No one would doubt that after watching Zerante work out at Lifetime Fitness early this month. Personal trainers Virgil Strzelecki and Drew Reinwald put him through an intensive one-hour workout during which the 175-pound Zerante carried first the 170-pound Strzelecki and next the 220-pound Reinwald up a flight of stairs on his back.
“He has gone through some of the most challenging exercises I’ve run across,” Mulvey said. “He came to work every day with a smile and worked his butt off. He wants this bad.”
On Aug. 10, the eve of Lake Park’s first preseason practice, Zerante felt prepared.
“Before, I would have wished I had run more and lifted more, but I have no regrets about my training,” he said. “This is my last shot, my senior year, my last chance to do it.”
His emotions were a jumble of fear he might have lost some of the ability that had made him a potential starter as a junior and confidence he will still start this fall.
“But I’m not looking too far ahead,” he said. “My goal is just to get back on the field, just to play football again.”
The early returns were encouraging for Zerante, who practiced with a seemingly nonstop smile. The weather the first few days of workouts was blessedly overcast, and he was among the fastest and fittest players on the team.
That was important to Zerante, who desperately wants to fit in.
“Phil really doesn’t want any sympathy or to be treated special,” offensive coordinator Chris Roll said. “He doesn’t want to be on the field because he’s a kid with lupus.”
Zerante had been somewhat of a mystery to most teammates. He had addressed them as a group about his lupus only before his biopsy, and he missed Lake Park’s off-season program to focus on his recovery. Only those who asked for details knew the extent of the disease.
Four days into practice, his comeback stumbled when on his first contact play in a year, he sprained his right shoulder while trying to stiff-arm a defender on a run up the middle.
“No big deal,” he said, and two days later he was back at practice, catching one-handed in passing drills and taking a handoff in a non-contact running drill until Livingston quietly told him to call it a day.
He has since been cleared for contact, and Livingston expects Zerante to play in Lake Park’s opener Friday night against Naperville Central.
Courage and confidence got him there.
“Phil’s an incredibly intense and confident kid,” Roll said. “At times it bordered on arrogance.
“Now it has been kind of an asset. It has become fearlessness instead of arrogance because he had to go through all this without any fear.”
Zerante’s determination has amazed teammates who know his medical history.
“He’s the most focused kid I’ve ever met,” senior defensive tackle Shane Herman said. “Even if he feels bad, he doesn’t let people know when he’s down. He always has his game face on.”
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Every morning, Zerante gulps down almost a dozen pills. He no longer has weekly infusions, and his chemotherapy sessions are now every three months.
Klein-Gitelman said his kidney disease is currently under control and describes his long-term prognosis as excellent, assuming he doesn’t have another serious lupus flare-up.
Zerante believes his fight has made him a better football player. He knows it has made him a better, more humble human being.
“I think what I went through has made me a 100 percent better person than I was,” he said. “I have a different perspective on a lot of things.”
That outlook allows him to find good fortune amid his roll call of adversity.
“As bad as everything sounds, it’s got kind of a good end to it because I’ll be able to play Friday,” he said. “I’m not sure everyone else with the disease is able to do what they want to do.
“Some kids wouldn’t be able to play football with this.
“I’m lucky.”
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