When Te Maire Martin when to the doctor after experiencing migraine headaches and nausea, the diagnosis he was given wasn't what he expected.
The North Queensland Cowboys and Kiwis utility back began experiencing issues ahead of the Cowboys' round seven clash against the Canterbury Bulldogs in late April. The 23-year-oldfrom Tokoroa played through the game, but after his symptoms got worse on the plane ride home and hadn't improved early the following week, he sought medical advice.
He was diagnosed with a brain bleed and told his season was over.
He says he really wasn't sure what he was going to be told, but a brain bleed was far from any diagnosis he imagined he might be given.
"It was just slowly coming and creeping in," Martin recalls to the Herald. "I didn't think too much of it.
"When you hear the brain bleeding bit you get a bit of a shock. The doctor told me it was a small one but would be enough to keep me out for a little bit and that's pretty much it."
Te Maire Martin has four test caps for the Kiwis. Photo / Getty Images
He immediately asked for an estimate of how long he would be sidelined for, hoping for the best. It wasn't the worst case scenario of being ruled out indefinitely, but being told he'd be sidelined for months rather than weeks wasn't what Martin was hoping to hear.
"At the start I just thought it would be a couple of weeks and I'd be sweet to play again but as I went to a few more specialists, they said to make sure it was right before getting back out there."
The Cowboys pored over footage of Martin's seven NRL games this season to see if they could find an incident that might have caused the ailment, but were unable to pick out anything that occurred on field that would have led to the bleed on the brain.
There was nothing really he could do to speed up his recovery; it was simply a case of letting time do its thing. His migraine and nausea persisted for a couple of weeks before subsiding. Martin was joined by his parents, Leslie and Greg, in Australia for the two weeks following his diagnosis, before he travelled back to New Zealand to spend a few weeks recuperating.
"It was good being back there for a few weeks. The headaches only lasted a couple of weeks so by the time I got back there I was still able to go fishing and pig hunting so it was good."
Now, about three months since his initial diagnosis, Martin has been getting back to work with the Cowboys' rehabilitation group. He has recently been working on his strength and conditioning training, trying to put on a bit of muscle after losing some weight as a result of being sidelined and held out of training.
He'll be able to return to training with the NRL squad in a skills capacity next week, but is yet to be cleared for contact work.
"That's just a step and it'll get a little bit harder each week until I can do the contact. Once I can do that I'll be sweet to play again."
Martin goes back to the specialist in November to be assessed on how well his recovery is progressing; all going well he'll be cleared for contact.
"Hopefully I'll be cleared by the end of this year," he says. "If everything goes good with the specialist in November I'll get back into it.
"All my conditioning and gym work is going a lot quicker and a lot better than what we thought it would. The doctors said I'd probably be [able to do contact work] at the end of the year, but the way things are going I think it'll be a bit earlier than that, so fingers crossed it is and everything goes good. It feels good at the moment."
