Pain and athletics often are synonymous.

Similar to many who are involved with sports, 2000 South Kitsap High School graduate Nolan Soete was accustomed to ignoring his aches.

But when he disregarded frequent chest pains and sore throats during the summer of 2002, it nearly resulted in his death.

“I was having nosebleeds and bruising all over my body,” said the 28-year-old Soete, who now is an assistant baseball coach at Pacific Lutheran University and a physical education teacher at Lakes High School in Lakewood. “I was doing tree work during the summer to save money. I just attributed it to my work.”

The position ended as the school year began, but the symptoms did not subside.

Soete remembers not being able to take 10 steps without stopping to rest.

After enduring shortness of breath while walking upstairs and a racing heartbeat throughout an early September night, Soete decided to go to the doctor, where he had some blood work done.

A day later, Soete was told to leave class because of his low blood counts and was rushed to the emergency room.

What he thought was a virus instead turned into a battle for survival.

It was just the second day of school, but Soete would not return for a year.

“I still get the chills”

Hours after leaving the Tacoma campus, Soete said sight in his right eye began to deteriorate until he was blind.

In addition, it turned out, he was bleeding internally and it was clotting.

“It was about the last second they could catch anything,” Soete said. “Going through that stuff at a young age — I was only 20 when I first found out I was sick — I was about as close to death as you can get. I shouldn’t have been alive. The doctors told me that my counts were so bad that they couldn’t believe I didn’t have a heart attack.

“When I think back on it,” he said, “I still get the chills. You start thinking about what you’ve done with your life and what you want to do. I was thinking about surviving.”

The doctors initially suspected Soete had leukemia, but after four days of tests they had another diagnosis — aplastic anemia.

It is a condition in which bone marrow does not produce sufficient new cells to replenish blood cells. In many cases, the cause of the illness cannot be determined.

“It has similar effects to leukemia — my body wasn’t producing its own blood and my immune system was shot,” Soete said. “I needed a bone-marrow transplant to recover.”

About two weeks later, his doctor walked in with the results.

While his parents were not matches — odds are only 1 in 10,000 of that happening — one of his sisters, Jacinda, was.

Siblings only are perfect matches 25 percent of the time.

“She’s very giving and didn’t think twice about it,” he said. “She’s really happy she had the opportunity to do it.”

In addition to being grateful to his sister, Soete is just happy he was able to get to that point.

He moved into the Pete Gross House in Seattle in late September and vividly remembers Oct. 15.

He was set to have his transplant the next day, but his temperature spiked to 104 degrees — and stayed there for a week.

Soete was transferred to the University of Washington Medical Center while he recovered.

“I lost 27 pounds,” Soete said. “I was pretty scared after that. I just told them I want to get in there as soon as possible to get this transplant rolling.”

It was just the first setback.

After Soete recovered and returned to the Pete Gross House, he underwent chemotherapy again as he prepared for a Nov. 5 transplant.

And again, the road to recovery was nearly derailed the day before.

He was given antithymocyte globulin, better known as horse serum, leading up to the procedure.

It had to be in Soete’s system for 12 hours to be effective, but he showed severe side effects, including convulsing.

The doctors had to stop the treatment after an hour before continuing later.

Soete’s shaking was so intense that he had to be restrained, but he pleaded for the procedure to continue.

“My body went haywire,” he said. “I was puking every 15 or 20 minutes.”

His sister, who was a freshman at Central Washington University at the time, then was moved to his room the following day to transfer her blood to him via a Hickman line in his chest.

Soete recalls her crying during the procedure — not because of the pain, but from the realization that she was saving his life.

“Jacinda was brave throughout the whole thing,” Soete said. “It wasn’t an easy process for her. She had to get poked a lot with a big needle right in the lower part of her back where they take the bone marrow.”

While the blood transfusions continued into January, Soete said he began noticing improvements 17 days later, which is about the timeframe the doctors predicted.

He said he never rejected any blood, which his body later began creating, and his hair started growing back around the same time.

Soete also started to regain vision when the hemorrhage began to clear up in early 2003.

He said his vision now is 20/70 in that eye; it was 20/20 before.

On Feb. 3, Soete was told that 80 percent of his blood cells were his sister’s.

Comeback mode

One of the first questions from an athlete who suffers a catastrophic injury or illness is usually about their ability to play again. Soete was no different.

The Lutes hired a new baseball coach, Geoff Loomis, and after utilizing his redshirt season in 2003, Soete was eager to return.

He moved back to Port Orchard and later began preparing for his comeback by running two miles per day.

He returned to campus in September.

“The doctors told me not to expect a lot,” Soete said. “It had only been about nine months. It takes three to five years to recover from a transplant. I was nowhere near recovered.”

That became apparent when Soete could not avoid illness.

He had strep throat three times within a year in addition to other illnesses and ailments.

“You’re like an infant exposed to germs all over again,” Soete said.

While Soete acknowledged that being a lifelong athlete might have contributed to his feeling of “invincibility” — he also attributed those thoughts as being a natural characteristic that comes with youth — he said his experiences in sports and dealing with adversity helped keep him strong.

He recalls lying in a hospital bed in Seattle when several South Kitsap coaches, including Eric Canton, Jim Fairweather, Dave Goodwin, Elton Goodwin, Steve Reischman and D.J. Sigurdson made an unannounced visit.

“If I had to go through that without people around me, it would’ve been really difficult,” Soete said.

The challenges continued through the 2004 baseball season.

After hitting .300 and .323 during the 2001-02 seasons, Soete went hitless in his first 21 at-bats in ’04.

He finished that season with a .200 average and just two home runs and 12 RBI.

“The first year, I was really tired all the time and had no energy,” Soete said. “I played for three weeks with an IV in my arm. I had severe sinus infections and my body just wasn’t great at fighting off things at the time.”

Soete, who played first base, rebounded the following year to hit .317 with four home runs and 18 RBI.

After the season, Loomis asked him to remain in the program as an assistant coach.

“Some of the things he had to endure showed his love for the sport,” said Loomis, who praised Soete’s character and work ethic, adding that he has given him more responsibilities, such as being the Lutes’ recruiting coordinator, during the last few years. “He’s dedicated to baseball.”

Soete, who is married to former South classmate Jessica (Swope) Soete, eventually hopes to guide his own college-baseball program.

“It’s kind of a requirement that I have for my assistant coaches,” said Loomis, referring to aspirations for an assistant to run their own team. “I’m lucky to have him here. He’s a really big part of our success here the last few years.”

He is grateful that he even can speak about the opportunity. Soete said his immune system counts are “pretty normal” and his biggest challenges now are reoccurring sinus infections, which he did not have before his diagnosis, and being more susceptible to illnesses.

And while he had to undergo his childhood vaccines again, he still contracted the chicken pox last year.

“I’m not mad,” he said. “Going through what I went through, I’m pretty happy with how healthy I am right now.”