By John Brice
Special Contributor
Four days in the hospital, three of them nights in the Intensive Care Unit.
Nine-year-old Ron Powlus III wasn’t sure what was wrong; at the time, nobody in his family knew. Nor did any medical personnel.
But a genuinely unquenchable thirst – hundreds of ounces of water per day – provided one of the most glaring clues.
“For me, when I was 9, it was summertime and one of the early symptoms of Type-1 diabetes is being extremely thirsty,” said Powlus III, whose father, former record-setting Notre Dame quarterback Ron Powlus, was then on staff as an assistant coach at Akron. “I was drinking like three gallons of water a day and still thirsty. So eventually we decided, ‘We probably need to get this figured out.’
“We went to the doctor and he decided to check my blood sugar. Since no one in my family had diabetes, we weren’t familiar with what that meant. The results came back at 400-something. I said to the doctor, ‘let’s fix it.’ But instead, the doctor said ‘the ambulance is on the way, you’re going to the hospital.’
“That’s kind of the origin of how it all happened.”
Those days and nights in the hospital confirmed the medical staff’s new suspicion that Powlus III had become the first in his family to be inflicted with Type-1 diabetes.
The experience and adapted lifestyle, however, did not thwart RP3’s desire to play multiple sports – he alternately starred as a youth in baseball, basketball and on the football field, same as his father.
“It was never a tremendous obstacle because he didn’t let become a tremendous obstacle,” said Ron Powlus, who started 46 games including postseason contests and had established 20 Fighting Irish records by the time he departed Notre Dame for a brief NFL career. “And we (father and mother, Sara) were supportive of his desire and drive to play sports.”
“It was something we dealt with and prepared for and incorporated into our plans, especially on days there were athletic competitions.”
As dad, once a coveted recruit out of Berwick, Pennsylvania for Lou Holtz and the Fighting Irish, sought to apply his knowledge of the game and then paved his pathway into coaching at Notre Dame, Akron and Kansas, RP3 continued to grow – physically taller and emotionally a more and more competitive, high-level athlete.
Along the way, RP3 simply continued…