By Dave Zeitlin C'03
 
Something was missing when Penn opened Ivy League play with its first win over Princeton in four years. And so, as the players enjoyed a jubilant celebration in the locker room on Jan. 6, men's basketball director of operations Brad Fadem pulled out his cell phone and Facetimed someone who was only a couple of blocks away.
 
Dan Dwyer picked up the call, smiling meekly as his teammates went wild on the screen. Like everyone else on the Penn basketball roster, Dwyer had never beaten Princeton and was definitely enjoying the moment. But laid up in a hospital bed, a feeding tube up his nose and down his throat causing horrible pain, the senior forward couldn't really do much celebrating.
 
"He loved seeing the guys," said his father, JJ. "But he said he felt bad because he couldn't really talk or scream or yell like they were."
 
How Dwyer—a perfectly healthy college basketball player getting ready to enjoy his final semester at Penn—ended up in a fourth-floor bed overlooking the Quad inside the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), instead of screaming and yelling with his teammates at the nearby Palestra that night, was about as unlucky as losing a game on a full-court heave.
 
His strange and harrowing medical saga began the day after Christmas. After enjoying the holiday with his parents and two brothers in his native Chicago, Dwyer flew back to campus the following day to get ready for Penn's game vs. Delaware State on Dec. 27th. Because it was winter break, no one else in the 42nd Street house he shares with football and lacrosse players were there when he woke up that night, squirming around with stomach pain. Maybe it was the flu, he thought as he began to throw up, and Penn Student Health figured the same when he paid them a visit the next morning. It wasn't until Dwyer arrived at the Palestra for Penn's game vs. Toledo on Dec. 29 that people began to realize it was far more serious than the flu or a stomach bug.
 
"That was the first time I got out of bed in three days," Dwyer said. "I just walked in, the doctor saw me and said, 'You gotta go to the emergency room.'"
 
After getting some tests at HUP it was determined Dwyer suffered from a rare abnormality called Meckel's diverticulum, a slight bulge in the small intestine that roughly two percent of the population is born with. (The vast majority of those who have it never experience any symptoms from it.)
 
With the blockage in his small intestine causing severe inflaming, a team of surgeons led by Dr. Benjamin Braslow operated on Dwyer that night, cutting off more than a foot of his small intestine before untangling it, fixing the obstruction, putting it back together and reinserting it into his body — or, as Dwyer not-so-delicately puts it, "They literally had like all my guts outside on the table." The doctor even took a picture of his guts and showed it to his parents, who flew to Philly the day after the operation. "I was very grossed out by it," JJ said. "But I did want to see it."
 
Because his small intestine was handled and exposed to a different temperature, it took his bowels more than two weeks to return to normal and for his stomach to retrain itself. In other words, Dwyer couldn't eat anything for about 10 days as a feeding tube pumped protein into his body. The surgery was a success but he lost about 30 pounds during a 16-day recovery process, struggling even to get up and walk down the hospital hallways.
 
What do you do during such a long hospital stay? Lots of TV, even when the fast-food commercials give you weird cravings for foods you're no longer hungry for. Endless SportsCenter. Maybe too much parent-son bonding time.
 
One of Dwyer's only saving graces were the constant visits he got from his coaches, teammates and others associated with Penn Basketball — the nurses looking on with endless fascination as lots of very tall people kept cramming into a very small room.
 
"It was like Groundhog Day in the hospital," JJ said. "But those guys really made a point to text him, to stop in every day. It was incredibly helpful for Dan in his recovery. He felt like it was a change of pace instead of staring at Mom and Dad all day. It made all the difference in the world."
 
Donahue also tried to lift the spirits of Dwyer's parents, inviting JJ — a self-admitted "basketball junkie" — to practice a couple of times, just to get his mind off things. And when his father would return to the hospital from the Palestra, he'd invariably be peppered by Dan about what the team did at practice and which players looked good.
 
"The changed dynamic of conversation when we could talk about something a little different," JJ said. "And every little bit helped at that point."
 
Donahue — who, while coaching at Cornell, dealt with an even scarier situation when former player Khaliq Grant broke his neck during practice and was briefly paralyzed — also used Dwyer's situation as a teaching tool for his own team, reminding the players that "you never know what's going to happen, so let's be grateful." And he thinks it helped bring the Quakers closer together as they've been inspired by how Dwyer beat one of the nastier opponents he's ever faced.
 
"I admire the courage he showed," the Penn coach said. "He never broke. And it was difficult for a young guy to go through all that, not knowing what the heck is going on."
 
Dwyer certainly has more clarity on his situation now, and is pleased to know there won't be any long-term effects medically. He's slowly putting back some of the weight he lost, treating himself to extra Qdoba after practice and late-night milkshakes. And Dwyer, who will graduate in May, never even had to catch up on any schoolwork since the entire hospital stay coincided with Winter Break.
 
But there is one very tough consequence: Dwyer is officially out for the rest of the season and will never again play basketball for Penn. That will make Saturday's final home game, when the seniors are honored before the Quakers take on Harvard in a first-place showdown, especially emotional for him and his family.
 
"You'd love to see him with a uniform on," JJ said. "But that's not gonna happen and he's resigned to it."
 
Being in street clothes, however, won't change the reception he'll receive from his teammates and coaches. Even though he was a role player throughout his college career, the 6-foot-8 forward always commanded respected from Donahue for his attitude — a quiet resolve combined with "some nastiness" on the court.
 
To best describe his value, the Penn coach goes back to a game at Cornell last season when, after seeing his playing time reduced, Dwyer was called upon to give some important minutes off the bench to help the Quakers eke out a three-point win.
 
"And if he doesn't, Donahue said, "who knows if we even make the [Ivy League] Tournament last year?
 
"I thought he was really doing well this year, and we could be using him as an experienced big," the Penn coach added. "That's what Danny is. He has a great IQ, a great feel for the game, great energy. He's in there for the team first. That's kind of how he's built."
 
Donahue hopes Dwyer will be granted a medical redshirt this season, which would allow him to play as a fifth-year senior for another school if he takes graduate school classes there. "And I know a lot of friends in the business who would love to have a 6-8 kid with a great IQ and loves to play," Donahue said.
 
But Dwyer — who was just starting the interview process for consulting and marketing jobs when he got sick — isn't thinking too much about the future just yet. He's learning to enjoy every day for what it is, to have a different outlook on life, to not take anything for granted.
 
And slowly but surely, he's getting his energy back, starting once again to lift weights and run around with his teammates even though he can't play in games (for a couple of games last month, he wasn't even allowed to sit on the bench because doctors were scared he might get grabbed where his incision is).
 
The question, of course, is will he have enough energy to charge out onto the court and go crazy with his teammates if the Quakers complete their remarkable turnaround with their first Ivy League championship in more than a decade?
 
"Yeah, definitely," Dwyer said with a smile. "Planning on it."