Before the pandemic had forced the NBA into a ‘bubble,’ Marcus Smart was already having a hard time. He passed on the Tokyo Olympics due to injuries when he contracted a viral condition. He barely came out of a ‘dark’ period and tested positive for COVID-19. It was likely a period he didn’t want to remember. But he carries a little reminder of it like a badge of honor.
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In a candid reflection on the most terrifying physical hurdle of his career, the Lakers player recently revisited the 2019 viral eye infection that sidelined him for weeks, By his own admission, he was terrified of losing his sight. On a recent NBAT2 stint, the former DPOY shared never-before-seen details of the illness and even the nasty visual with a fan.
The fan wanted to see a picture from his camera roll he would never post. That made him pull close up shots of his ‘pink eye’ during treatments. “This is back when I had a serious eye infection. And this is what they were pulling out of my eyes. And the doctors were even like, ‘We don’t even know what it is,'” Smart said while scrolling through a camera roll of photos he labeled as “too graphic” to ever post publicly.
Yet he showed an indescribable picture of that ‘gunk’ in his eyes. The infection, later diagnosed as a severe case of viral conjunctivitis, caused such extreme inflammation that his eyes began to produce thick mucus membranes that required doctors to physically extract them from his eyes.
He revealed that the condition was so aggressive he was forced into a localized “lockdown” months before the COVID-19 pandemic would shutter the world. “My tears were contagious. So, like, I had to get locked in my own room inside my own house. It was right before COVID. So, I was on lockdown right before we locked down.”
The psychological toll was as heavy as the physical pain, with Smart noting that the isolation at home was necessary to protect his young family, loved ones and even teammates from the highly transmissible virus.
The ‘darkest’ time of Marcus Smart’s life
To the average person, “pink eye” sounds like a minor inconvenience, but for Marcus Smart in December 2019, it was a medical anomaly. Doctors back then said that the former Celtics star was suffering from the worst case of viral conjunctivitis they had ever seen.
According to an harrowing account he gave to The Athletic, a suspected allergic reaction made him miss a game, That escalated to a pink eye that spread from his left eye to his right and the doctors diagnosed him with an adenoid virus, a type of severe viral conjunctivitis. Doctors feared if it got to his corneas, he would suffer from lifelong vision problems.
At the same time he was dealing with injuries from a calf soreness to a concussion and even a brutal flu. “Even in the dark, I was wearing sunglasses. It was that bad. Just every morning I would wake up just having sticky discharge coming out of my eyes, sealing my eyes shut. It was really just gross,” he said back then.
The ophthalmologists extracted the mucus for four days straight. He said he was bleeding tears for days after it. He even saved pictures of the extractions to traumatize his Celtics teammates with it. Clearly he’s held on to them with no intention of publicizing it.
The recovery was so grueling that he lost significant weight during the first week simply because the pain made it impossible to eat.
Amid fears of going blind, the doctors saved his eyes from major damage. But the treatment wasn’t done. His eyes were monitored for months and he stayed in dark rooms to cut any exposure to light. He even hired a cleaning service to “bleach” his house and purge any remnants of the virus.
By the time Smart returned to the court in early 2020, he had gained a new perspective on his durability. While he has since moved on from the Celtics to stints with the Grizzlies and now the Lakers, the “eye infection year” remains a dark milestone in his career.