West Virginia quarterbacking great Rasheed Marshall recovering from pulmonary embolism

To see such a message wasn’t particularly unusual because the West Virginia coach has run his program with a heart, but what was unusual was to see whose tweet it was.

See, if there is one person you don’t expect to see with health problems, it is former Mountaineer quarterback Rasheed Marshall, as well-chiseled and personally aware of his well-being a person as there is anywhere.

But over Christmas, he was in the hospital in Pittsburgh facing a dangerous medical problem for the second time since his football career ended — a pulmonary embolism.

“We all need to watch over our health. None of us are Superman. None of us are excluded from some of these health predicaments,” he said Thursday as he continued his recovery.

Five or six years ago, he said, he had almost the same problem.

“This one was pretty rough. Come to think of it, they both were pretty rough. It came out of nowhere. I was on blood thinners,” he said.

The first time came after his NFL career was over and he was working with clients as a fitness instructor, a job he took very seriously.

“The first time, I kept writing it off,” he admitted. “The one thing that throws you off is the clot, it starts in your leg and travels to your lung. When it initially formed, I thought I’d strained a calf muscle or whatever. What happened was my breathing started to take a weird turn as well. I thought something definitely was going on, but I was thinking it was something from the cold weather, can’t breathe and I might need an inhaler.”

That’s what it first was diagnosed as — exercise-induced asthma. He had that as a child.

“They said, ‘OK, here’s your inhaler,” he remembered. “But the pain in the leg never went away. It got to the point where I couldn’t walk. I basically just checked myself into the ER. They knew something was up right away, checked me right in, did a lot of scans, then they admitted me.

“At that point they didn’t think there were any clots that had broken off and traveled to my lungs, but they wanted to make sure. Well, sure enough, there were. They said, ‘You’re not going home now’ and they admitted me.

“They got everything under control, I started working my way back to normal, and here I am now, five years later, same thing. It’s unbelievable.

“The one crazy thing about it was it was almost like identical situations. The day I went to the hospital I’d just left the gym. I was still working out. Being an athlete you don’t think the worst. You think ‘OK, I’m just a little tired, I’m out of shape, I need to push more,’” he said.

But Marshall knew something was up.

“I’m in tune with my body. I pay attention to everything down to resting heart rate, max heart rate, a little of different variables that a lot of people probably wouldn’t pay attention to. I was able to notice a lot of changes. I knew something was going wrong, but I didn’t know what,” he said.

“Once I left the gym that day. I said to myself, ‘OK, if I’m not feeling better, if I’m not recovering (from the workout) as I should I’m just going to go ahead to the ER. I’m not going to mess around with this.”

And so, he wound up again in the ER.

“They told me all the vitals were looking good, but they just wanted to make sure so they did a CAT scan and said I could go home,” he said.

And that’s when they found the blood clot.

It’s so hard to imagine someone who performed with such skill and strength on the football field, really the player who paved the way for Pat White at WVU, could be shut down, but that’s how it is now. He’s doing some things but not at the intensity and level at which he was.

The lesson?

If it’s out of the ordinary, if it hurts or makes life uncomfortable, have it checked out.

As Rasheed Marshall said, “None of us are Superman.”