Ticats' Peter Dyakowski returns from torn patellar tendon and life-threatening pulmonary embolism in quest of better B.C. Place championship result

He had surgery four days after getting home, and was laid up in his office — “I lived in my office. I was like Howard Hughes for a couple months,” he says — and nothing felt normal. He was on painkillers. He and Rachel were trying out readings for their January wedding, and something was wrong. He couldn’t finish a sentence. He tried to ignore, and ignore the pain in his back, until it shot up to a 10 in the middle of the night.

“I was trying to sleep and I couldn’t, and I was Googling my symptoms,” says Dyakowski. “You know what? It was probably one of the first time someone Googled the correct symptoms. It’s a favourite of hypochondriacs to look up whatever crazy thing, and it tells you you have Hungarian whooping cough or something.”

It was blood clot in his leg and a pulmonary embolism in his right lung, which had collapsed. After Rachel found him they called Carly Vandergrient, the team’s trainer, who picked him up in the team van, because he couldn’t fit in a car with his leg in a brace.

In the hospital he was whisked in — “the trick, if you ever go to the hospital, is tell them you’re having problems breathing, and they’ll take care of you right away,” he says — and tried to ask questions about how treatable it would be to keep Rachel calm, even though he was freaking out inside. (“I was freaking out regardless,” says Rachel.)

They put him on blood thinners, kept him in hospital, got him through the danger zone. Rachel had to inject him in the stomach with blood thinners, for a while. He was okay. He made it. (He wants to thank the people at Hamilton General, especially the Thrombosis Clinic, and especially Marlene.) He didn’t have to be as serious anymore.

“Everybody in the private school system knew Pete,” said Jon Cornish, the math whiz more commonly known as the feature back with the Calgary Stampeders. “Pete was the dude on their offensive line with the super long hair, super long. I think he had some old Mustang. He distinguished himself with aloof (read: unique) personality.”

...Dyakowski, whose first love was soccer, didn’t come out for football until Grade 10 at Van College, when his cousin, who played for the Alberta Golden Bears, and Fighting Irish head coach Todd Burnett convinced him he might have a future in the game.

That same year he was a 15-year-old spectator the last time the Ticats and Stampeders played in a Grey Cup game at BC Place — 1999, when Danny McManus quarterbacked the Ticats to a 32-21 win over the Stampeders, coached by Wally Buono and with Dave Dickenson starting at quarterback for Calgary.

“I still have the ticket stubs, framed, on a wall at my parents’ house in Vancouver,” Dyakowski said. “I have the souvenir T-shirt, too. It doesn’t fit me any more. And I’ve got the poster. I was cheering for the Ticats. I chose them because they were the closest feline equivalent to the B.C. Lions. They were always my favourite team in the East. So, it’s kind of special to be back here, with the team that drafted me (he was a second-round pick by the Ticats in 2006). The last time I played a championship game here, we lost.”...

“The last time we played them, we got the upper hand,” Cornish said, not referring to Sunday’s Grey Cup game but the battle between the STM Knights and the VC Fighting Irish 13 years ago.

In 2001, Dyakowski played at B.C. Place, site of this Sunday’s 102nd Grey Cup, as a member of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish in the provincial high school football championship against Carson Graham Secondary School.

“We lost,’’ said Dyakowski on Wednesday after his Ticats wrapped up their first practice at B.C. Place. “The game wasn’t even close.”

When pressed to provide details, Dyakowski acknowledged the outcome: “We got hammered. This playoff redemption at B.C. Place has been a long time coming.”