If a broken left middle finger during summer ball wasn’t already something to be worried about for Eastern baseball player Demetre Taylor, a near-fatal cyst growing inside the throat of the Panthers’ left fielder certainly did not help his cause.

A week before Eastern opened its doors for the fall semester in August, Taylor first spotted a growth near his throat, but he thought nothing of it initially.

“I noticed it a week before classes started and I was like, ‘what the heck, I can’t get any girls with this,’” he said.

One of the reasons he did not pay much attention to the mysterious lump was because his beard was growing over it and he could not detect how big it actually was.

Yet, he did know something wasn’t right because every time Taylor tried to eat and swallow his food, his throat would hurt.

He went to Health Services on Aug. 22, when he was given antibiotics, but after the weekend the lump grew instead of shrinking. On Wednesday, Aug. 27, Taylor returned to Health Services, as he could no longer swallow his food.

“It was a different doctor the second time and the first thing he said was, ‘Demetre, what seems to be the…holy s***,’” Taylor said.

The doctor was stunned to see the size of the cyst on Taylor and immediately told the junior that he needed surgery to remove the growth that same day.

“He told me, that if I would’ve waited a couple more days, or if when I was eating and would have thrown up I could’ve died from suffocation,” Taylor said. “I was just in f****** shock when he told me. It didn’t really hit until after surgery.”

Taylor had the cyst removed, which had grown to the size of a baseball.

“My surgeon said that when she cut it open it exploded everywhere, puss and everything,” he said. “They had a tube sticking out of my neck, draining all the puss. Nasty.”

During the time of his cyst removal, the Eastern baseball team was beginning its fall training, preparing for the 2015 season. Taylor missed three weeks of fall ball with the Panthers, recovering from the surgery but he was finally able to return to action, although it wouldn’t last for long.

The Eastern baseball team had its alumni weekend starting on Oct. 3. During that weekend the Panthers played a friendly game, but unfortunately for Taylor it was his last time running the bases this year.

“I was just rounding third base, not really going fast and one or two of my spikes went in to my cleat and it snapped my bone in half,” Taylor said. “I kept running and I heard like a ripping sound and I was thinking to myself, what the heck was that?”

Once he landed on his left foot again after taking another stride, Taylor said he quickly felt the pain.

“Nobody really thought anything about it,” he said.

Somehow, he continued to play during the game, but in his next plate appearance he was no longer able to put up with the pain.

“I tried to go hit again, but it hurt so bad that I couldn’t push up on it like I wanted to,” he said. “It felt like a railroad spike was just being pounded into my foot or like a long spear going into my foot.”

Taylor was told at first that it was a bruised bone and that he should stay off of his left foot until the pain went away, so he was given crutches. That was before any x-rays were taken on Oct. 6.

“My coach texted me and I told him it was just a bruised bone and I’ll be all right, but that was before the x-rays,” Taylor said. “After I got the x-rays back I was like, ‘oh, s*** I’m not going to be all right. I might be out a couple of weeks during the start of the season.”

Taylor said he already had a sprained ankle before returning to fall action with the baseball team and that he probably should not have played, but decided to anyway because he had already missed time because of his cyst.

“I taped it up and wore a brace and kept playing, and I had already missed three weeks, so I couldn’t miss anymore time,” he said. “I’ve played on a sprained ankle before in football, so I thought I could do it.”

After he received the x-rays that revealed a fractured bone in his foot, Taylor was advised to have surgery, which consisted of inserting a screw to connect his broken bone.

Taylor was in shock at first and did not know where to turn, or who to talk to.

“I didn’t really talk to any of the baseball guys because I was so torn, so mentally torn,” Taylor said. “I just couldn’t believe how something so little turned out to be so big. I didn’t really talk to anyone. I closed. I mentally closed like a shell.”

Standing at 6-foot-3, anyone who has seen Taylor take at-bats at Coaches Stadium can tell that the Tampa, Fla., native has a football background. Being one of the biggest and strongest players with the Eastern baseball team, he said he was more closed off after the injury because he could not deal with how he was injured.

“I was more embarrassed than anything because I’m the biggest, strongest guy on the team and all my strength came naturally, I’m naturally gifted, naturally talented and I just couldn’t believe that I got hurt the way I did,” he said.

Taylor finally spoke with his mother and father, who both told him to avoid the surgery. He was set on his decision after he talked with his father, Michael Taylor.

“My father was a big help, he said at first that I should get the screw, but then he thought about it and said don’t get the screw because there’s life after baseball, there’s life after sports,” Taylor said. “That was the big thing that he said. ‘You’re going to have problems with that screw when you’re old.’”

On Oct. 10, four days after surgery was given as an option, Taylor decided not to have the procedure, instead choosing to let the bone heal naturally.

So, Taylor went to work, hitting the books and trying to stay healthy.

“I couldn’t really rehab, so I basically hit the books hard, prayed hard and I just trained on my own, put myself on a diet so I didn’t gain any extra weight,” Taylor said. “I played it smart and I didn’t want to rush anything with the heeling process. I just stayed off my foot and did what I was told.”

Taylor wore a protective boot from Oct. 4 to Nov. 21 before it was taken off. When he was initially told about the fracture, doctors said he would not be back to full strength until January or February.

When he went to go see his doctor last week, before Thanksgiving break, he was told that the bone had healed and that his boot could be removed.

“I just believed in God, believed in me and believed in my body,” Taylor said. “I’m ahead of schedule. I won’t be running full speed until January, but I’ll be back with the team after winter break.”

On Tuesday, Taylor spoke with Eastern coach Jim Schmitz, who was surprised to learn that Taylor had recovered from his injury.

But maybe it shouldn’t have come as big of a surprise because Taylor, who was instructed not to participate in any baseball activities while in his boot, still managed to sneak his way into the batting cages.

“Schmitz told me I shouldn’t be hitting and the trainer would say you can’t do it, but I would just give them a look that would basically say, ‘I don’t really care if you tell me not to, I’m going to do it anyway,’ so Schmitz let me,” Taylor said. “Every time, Schmitz would ask if I was OK and I would just give him a thumbs up and smile at him.”

Taylor said Schmitz liked his mental attitude, but was more worried about getting the outfielder back 100 percent healthy even if it took longer than Taylor coming back quicker but being at 80 percent.

Nonetheless, Taylor continued to hit every Monday and Wednesday with his boot on and now he’s ready for the start of next season.

“I know that if there was a game tomorrow, I would be starting in left fielder – I would be somewhere in that lineup,” he said.

Last season, Taylor led Eastern in home runs, with seven, RBIs, with 53 and slugging percentage at .536. The junior said that although he missed time during the fall, when the team does the bulk of its preparation, he felt that it was a positive for him despite the different injuries he had to battle.

“It gave my body a rest and I don’t think the time off will affect me, I just got some good rest,” he said.

Taylor stayed in Charleston for Thanksgiving, but is heading back home to Tampa for winter break, when he plans on starting to run on the beach to get back running at full speed. He said he would take it slow even after the New Year, but is fully expecting to be ready for the start of the season on Feb. 13, 2015, when the Panthers play at Northwestern State in Troy, Ala.

But even then, Taylor will have to deal with his broken left middle finger, which he suffered playing summer ball.

As a member of the Quincy Gems, which are a part of the Prospects League, Taylor broke his middle finger that he first broke back in high school during his junior year playing football.

Taylor said that he was going to stop playing because of the broken finger, but Quincy lost more players and were short, so he decided to play anyway.

“Every game I would have three Advil, four Ibuprofen and 2-3 Tylenol,” Taylor said. “It would be reddish and then purple. It got so swollen that it got to the point that I had to cut holes in my batting glove so that I could fit my hand inside. That s*** was painful. On a scale of 1-10 that was an eight and my foot was a 10, well actually my foot was a 20.”

Taylor kept playing and he had no choice, as Quincy advanced into the playoffs and eventually won the Prospects League Championship.

Taylor was scheduled to have surgery on his broken finger sometime during the fall, but because of his cyst it was pushed back.

Then his foot injury occurred. He plans on playing the season with the broken finger and said it doesn’t really affect gripping his bat, feeling only a slight discomfort when throwing a baseball.

“I’m tired of going to the hospital and I’ll get surgery sometime in the summer,” he said. Taylor has taken it all in stride, even laughing about everything that has happened to him in the last six months.

“Boy, it was a rough deal for me this semester,” he said as he smiled. “I’ve had a rough semester, but hopefully everything will be good.”

Aldo Soto can be reached at 581-2812 or asoto2@eiu.edu.