‘A superbug ate my back’ – All Blacks star reveals horrific infection that almost left him wheelchair bound
All Blacks and Crusaders prop Tamaiti Williams is currently sidelined with a spinal infection.
All Blacks and Crusaders front-row Tamaiti Williams has revealed the agony he has gone through due to the spinal infection which has kept him on the sidelines for the past six months.
In March, it was revealed that the 26-year-old would miss the rest of the Crusaders’ Super Rugby Pacific campaign due to discitis, which is an infection in one of the discs in his spine.
Williams was in action during the early rounds of the Southern Hemisphere club competition in February but has now provided an update on his extended stint on the sidelines and the recovery process after being infected by methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is a type of staph bacteria that resists many common antibiotics.
“It’s a bug called MRSA. It’s like a superbug. It’s like resistant to antibiotics. So pretty much settled in my disc in my back. Ate away my disc, really,” Williams told The Good, The Bad & The Rugby Australia & New Zealand podcast.
“Have you ever seen a tree on fire? How the inside of the tree burns first, that’s pretty much what happened to my spine.
‘We love rugby, right, but I like walking, too’
“I got real sick, I almost got sepsis twice. One of the first things they told me was I might be in a wheelchair. We love rugby, right, but I like walking, too.”
Doctors told Williams he was lucky that the infection was in the middle of his back, as his condition could have been much more serious had it been in his lower back.
He initially thought he had just suffered a minor back injury during a Crusaders Super Rugby Pacific clash against the Chiefs in Hamilton in round three at the end of February.
However, he soon realised his injury was more serious after suffering unbearable pain.
“I had a bit of an episode one night and I was rolling around in bed, 10 out of 10 pain, arguing with my wife not to go to the hospital. My mum gave me a call and said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t go to the hospital’,” revealed Williams.
“I play at 140kg, when I left hospital, I was about 122 kilos. I was on such strong antibiotics, I could’t eat much, I was literally fading away.
“I was in so much pain, I was on morphine… the whole shebang. The hardest thing was coming off the pain meds, I was getting panic attacks. I’ve just been battling away with that.
‘You kind of get sick of being in pain’
“It was like, I wasn’t depressed or anxiety, but because I was so reliant on drugs, the morphine to help with pain, when they tapered me off it, my body was just freaking out. You kind of get sick of being in pain… because it hurts all the time, it takes all your energy away.”
The 27-Test prop has attended Crusaders and Canterbury matches during his recovery and he did spend some time with the All Blacks when they hosted France in their opening Nations Championship Test in Christchurch in July.
Williams is hopeful of returning to action but revealed that his recovery suffered a setback when the superbug returned nearly two months after first appearing.
“I think there’s always a risk; it’s come back once. I’ve done seven weeks on antibiotics through a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line. Went to Aussie to refresh the mind, when I got back I just knew the pain, and I ended up in hospital again. And that’s when the surgeon was like, ‘We want to operate’,” he said.
“I think they will be pretty surprised if it comes back now. The way they explained it to me is my spine wasn’t really stable; it’s like when you break your arm, put it in a cast, keep it still, it heals. My spine was always moving and it just gave it an area for the bacteria to grow.”
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Williams now has four large screws in his spine – specifically the L1 and T12 vertebra – which fuses it. He is still using oral antibiotics until mid-October, and is doing his rehab under the watchful eye of Crusaders physio John Roche, who has him doing little more than walking exercises.
“I’ve got a pretty mean team. We don’t have a date, but it’s more like do a six-week block of training, get some scans and have another meeting, see how it’s going. It’s not a common thing; it hasn’t really happened much, especially in rugby players, so there’s no date,” he added.
However, he has cautiously been approved to progress to running when the Crusaders start their pre-season training in November.
“It’s going to be a long pre-season,” he said.
“I’m ready, I’m keen to get going. I haven’t done a pre-season since 2021, my first year.”