He Spreads the Word in a Whisper : Sanson Was Close to Losing His Life and Now Struggles to Regain His Voice

Engulfed in a thick, paralyzing emptiness, he gasped for air. Choking, his face contorted and his eyes widening with panic, Phil Sanson discovered that he had no way of telling the nurses around him that he was suffocating.

His vocal cords rendered useless and his air passage blocked, Sanson feared death was imminent. As he felt himself dying, he was overwhelmed by the helpless realization that no one around him knew or could stop what was happening.

His heartbeat slowed, and the unspoken voice of his mind said: “Lord, take me.”

Then, he slipped into unconsciousness.

When he awoke a few hours later, his mind latched onto the thing that mattered most when his terrifying ordeal began.

Grabbing the wrist of the man peering over him, he mouthed: “Did we win?”

Dr. Arthur Fenn didn’t know who had won The Master’s College-Dominican College basketball game in San Rafael the previous evening, Jan. 9.

The doctor was only too glad to track down the score and pass on tidings of The Master’s victory to the young man who nearly gave his life trying to save a basketball from going out of bounds. Fenn saved Sanson from going permanently out of bounds. Slicing a hole in Sanson’s larynx, he opened an air passage and inserted a tube, forcing oxygen into Sanson’s empty lungs.

“There was a point there where it was a matter of minutes whether he’d live or die,” Fenn said. “He was rapidly deteriorating.”

The replay gave Sanson nightmares during his stay in the hospital, yet he has no regrets about going for the ball.

“It’s a normal reaction,” said Sanson, his voice a slight whisper. “I saw it going out of bounds and I thought I could save it.”

The 6-foot-7, 210-pound senior forward crashed headfirst into the bleachers. On impact, his larynx was crushed. “In the flow of the game, you don’t think about stuff like this,” Sanson said. “You don’t say, ‘I’ll go after this one, not this one.’ ”

Never more alone with his thoughts than he has been the past 5 1/2 months, Sanson, 22, wonders whether he’ll ever breathe without the tube inside his neck or ever talk above a whisper.

On Friday, he will undergo his sixth in a series of operations. By late August, if his voice grows stronger and the healing continues, the tube might be removed.

In the meantime, Sanson’s breathing is labored. He can talk in a hoarse whisper, usually by putting a finger on the hole of the tube to force air into his mouth.

Quietly religious when he enrolled two years ago at The Master’s in Santa Clarita, Sanson became a spokesman for his faith when he lost the ability to speak.

From his hospital bed, the day after the accident, he wrote: “I give thanks to the Lord for saving my life.”

He credits God’s words, gleaned from daily Bible study, for giving him the patience to handle his breathing and communication problems.

Psalm 116, Verse 1, is his favorite:

“I love the Lord because He has heard my voice . . .”

For more than a month, no one heard Sanson’s voice. Since then, it has improved to a whisper, so quiet that even when he felt passionate about issues in his contemporary American politics class, he often remained silent because it would take him too much time and energy to express himself.

On other occasions, he hurriedly jotted down a Reader’s Digest version of his viewpoint for classmate Andy Thompson to read to the class.

Even the simplest messages became tiring and time-consuming to jot down. “And you can’t express emotions on paper,” Sanson said.

Often, roommate Don Peters became his voice. A longtime friend and teammate, Peters understood Sanson’s hand motions and learned to read his lips. He handled Sanson’s phone calls and relayed information between Phil and his friends.

On the bench at The Master’s games, Sanson needed no interpreter. Beginning Jan. 20, he attended every game, celebrating each dunk with a thrust of his fist and greeting his teammates with high-fives as they came off the floor for timeouts. “He was an inspiration,” Peters said. “It’s amazing to see someone who’s not out there be a part of the team, like he’s on the floor.”

Afterward, Sanson’s body language told another story. “A lot of times he was down after games,” Peters said. “It really hurt him not to be able to play.”

Sanson’s fervor for basketball was nurtured in Girard, Ill., a farming community of 2,400, located 35 miles southwest of Springfield.

In 18 games at The Master’s this season, he averaged 10 points and six rebounds, patterning his game after Larry Bird because he shares with the former Boston Celtics star a small-town background, lanky frame, proficiency from the three-point line and blue-collar work ethic.

High school basketball was the only game in a town without a movie theater, shopping mall or fast-food outlet. Sanson was the star of the Girard High basketball team, the captain of the football team and a stock clerk at Cherry’s Country Store, the only supermarket in town.

In 1989, he enrolled at Lincoln Land College in Springfield and played basketball for Coach Pat Smith, a disciplinarian.

One night after a defeat on the road, Smith ordered his players to ride the bus home in their sweaty uniforms. Upon their return to campus, they practiced. During a lengthy loose ball drill, Smith threw the ball near the out-of-bounds line, next to a row of chairs. Sanson lunged out of bounds, batted the ball inbounds, and scattered a row of chairs in his wake. Impressed, Smith ended the practice on the spot and Sanson earned the gratitude of his teammates.

During Sanson’s two seasons at Lincoln Land, all but a handful of players quit the team. Yet there was no question that Sanson would stick. “Phil’s a survivor,” said Peters, a Lincoln Land alumnus. “He always has been.”

The years with Smith gave Peters and Sanson plenty of stories to share in their dormitory room at The Master’s. They also talked about the simpler lives they left behind in Illinois farm country.

Peters, Sanson’s perennial backup, replaced him against Dominican and helped the Mustangs clinch an emotional 77-71 victory. He stayed in the starting lineup the rest of the season.

“I felt a big responsibility,” Peters said. “I owed him because he taught me so much. I mean if he was willing to give his life for that ball, I should give 110%.”

It is a seven-hour drive to the Bay Area for Sanson’s appointments with Dr. Herbert Dedo, a larynx specialist. Since his initial operations, Sanson has returned to San Francisco three times for surgical procedures.

On Feb. 12, Dedo inserted a device designed to keep the edges of Sanson’s vocal cords from scarring together, thereby preventing sound and air from getting through. The keel, as it is called, was removed March 26, then reinserted May 28 because part of the area remained scarred.

Sanson hopes that each trip north is his last. Teammate Rusty Clark, another Illinois farm boy and former Lincoln Land player, has driven Sanson to several of those procedures.

Clark has rarely witnessed his friend’s frustration, but it showed on the road. Heading north, Sanson was quiet, apprehensive and hopeful. On the way back to Santa Clarita, he was exhausted and absorbed in handling the latest setback.

These trips were far different from the ones Sanson and Clark took with Lincoln Land. In those days, Sanson passed the time playing practical jokes on his teammates.

He also drank beer occasionally and used foul language. It was his way of dealing with his parents’ divorce. “I rebelled,” Sanson said. “I was a one-day-a-week Christian.”

During those Sunday services, Sanson prayed for Clark, who was home sleeping.

Unknown to Clark, Sanson believed that his friend would benefit spiritually from attending The Master’s. He helped Coach Mel Hankinson recruit Clark, who flourished at The Master’s. He served as team co-chaplain last season and was recently named associate minister of the Community Christian Church of Long Beach.

Sanson also was transformed spiritually.

During his sophomore year at Lincoln Land, he started reading the Bible. Eventually, he forgave his father for leaving his mother. Unlike the faith of many of the people he met the following year at The Master’s, his was a silent faith. Sanson never discussed his religion until he nearly died playing basketball.

“The accident brought attention to him,” Clark said. “And that’s when he expressed that the Lord saved his life. Never before did people look up to him as a spiritual leader.”

Yet Sanson also expressed doubts about his faith. In the recovery room after the life-saving cricothyrotomy, he thought, “Why me, God?”

Clark asked the same question. “We did so many drills to punish our bodies and nothing happened,” Clark said. “And then, on a simple play . . . it was nothing we never did at Lincoln Land, it was a lot simpler. . . . “

The other question, “Will Sanson regain the use of his voice?” is usually avoided.

One night, the question was thrust on Sanson and a group of friends while they were watching a video. One of the characters in the movie used an artificial voice box to speak. Shaken, Sanson walked out of the room, whispering: “That could be me.”

Quickly, his friends turned off the film. “It’s hard sometimes to be around him,” Clark acknowledged. “When a person is that quiet, you don’t know what to say. You don’t want to say too much or say the wrong thing.”

Among Sanson’s stack of get-well cards is one from a hockey player in Missouri who knew exactly what to say.

The youngster suffered a similar injury when a skate blade sliced his neck. “It really touched my heart,” Sanson said. “You know, walking around, you never, never think about this. My doctor says he does these surgeries every day, but I’ve never seen someone else it happened to. It made me feel like I’m not all alone.”

The cards, and support from teammates, coaches, classmates and relatives, particularly his mother, Nancy, enable Sanson to handle his frustrations. He also relies on the counsel of team trainer Bill Vine, who read his mind in the hospital recovery room. Vine advised him to ask, “What can I do now?” instead of “Why me?”

“At times I just want to yell,” Sanson said. “But the good times outweigh the bad.”

The Master’s College, a nondenominational Christian school, is tucked into the foothills of Santa Clarita. Each of the 850 students is pictured in the school directory. It is the kind of place where students graduate in four years, together as a class.

Sanson’s ability to make up missed assignments and graduate on time was remarkable given the physical toll of the operations, the difficulties he had communicating and the doubt about whether he would regain his speech and capacity to breathe on his own.

“I didn’t know after it happened if I would have a chance to graduate,” Sanson said. “It was long and hard. But unlike a lot of people, I like school and I didn’t mind dedicating myself to it.”

For the first four weeks, Sanson rested and studied at home in Girard. When he returned to campus, he added basketball practice and home-and-away games to his class and study schedule. Often, he studied on the team bus. Peters felt guilty going to sleep while Sanson studied, but Sanson did not complain, except for an occasional sigh.

At The Master’s, students cross paths several times a day, so when a week went by and teammate Dave Humphrey hadn’t seen Sanson, he knew he was buried in books, including an 18-hour study session for a Western philosophy exam.

“He never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him,” Humphrey said. “Even though his faith is wonderful, with his competitive spirit he would have been the same way.”

Amid the reading assignments and exams, Sanson made time to regain a semblance of physical conditioning. His goal was to appear in one game before the season ended. With Dedo’s clearance, Hankinson allowed Sanson to travel with the team to Marion, Ind., for the season-ending National Christian Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament.

For the first time since his accident, Sanson donned a Masters’ uniform and warmed up with his teammates. A neck brace designed by Vine protected his larynx. Sanson did not play, however, because the wires from the keel irritated his neck and the risk of further injury was too great. “I wasn’t disappointed at all,” Sanson said. “I felt more a part of the team.”

On May 8, he felt part of a 170-member graduating class. “It was just a big relief,” said Sanson, who posted a 3.5 grade-point average. “I really didn’t believe I was done until I was walking up there.”

When his name was announced, friends and strangers gave him an enthusiastic cheer. “Everyone did rally around him, which I would expect,” said Gregg Frazer, one of Sanson’s professors. “But it was more so because Phil is so sincere, friendly and congenial. Everyone liked him so well.”

Sanson now has a score of decisions to make. A job market awaits him that is stifled by the recession. Plans to travel the world and play basketball with Athletes in Action are on hold as is his dream of becoming an FBI agent. After Friday’s surgery, he will return to Illinois and work for the state, his employer the past two summers. “I think about the future every day,” Sanson said. “I wonder what I’m going to be doing a year from now.”

Peters is certain Sanson will find a way to become an FBI agent. Yet he need not solve any crimes to be a modern-day hero to his teammates. “He could have died very easily,” Humphrey said. “It’s remarkable to see how far he’s come. Just by the way he’s handled it, he’s been a joy to everybody’s eye. A joy to everybody’s heart.”