Donation page to bring boxer home - in coma

The family of this fighter wrote in to ask if we could post this, which I'll gladly do.  Sounds like a tragic reminder of the danger that all professional and amateur fighters take when they engage in combat sports.  It's rare but the risk for something like this is there.

http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&opt=printable&id=94520

By Thomas Gerbasi

Kalae McShane may have left Hawaii to pursue glory in the boxing ring, but he hasn’t stopped representing his island, and the folks back home have responded in kind, gathering together for the 22-year-old’s most important fight yet.

Currently in a coma at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, due to swelling on the brain, McShane is far from home, but in the thoughts and prayers of the family and friends who want to bring him back to Wai’anae.

“I’m blown away with the attention and everybody trying to help out,” said Danny Kaheaku, who has coached McShane since the boxer was seven years old. “In Hawaii, we have that thing called the ‘aloha spirit.’ Everybody’s taught to love and appreciate what we do. We come from a small place and that’s all we have, so we have to stick together.”

The unbeaten super bantamweight prospect needs that support now. Perfect as a pro with a 5-0 record, McShane, a multiple-time State amateur champion, was coming off a 23-second knockout of Payak Twins Gym on July 27 in Thailand, the site of all of his pro fights. Following the bout, “Super Shane” decided to stick around to work with the national boxing team.

“On August 4th, he reported to his coach that he had a headache, his coach told him to take it easy, and not so long after that, he started throwing up and they rushed him to a hospital,” said Casey Morton, a pro super flyweight from Hawaii and a friend of McShane and his family. “He had swelling in his brain and eventually fell into a coma.”

The first hospital McShane was brought to was less than a first-class facility, and they didn’t accept the fighter’s insurance, or any insurance for that matter.

“The first hospital he was at was like a clinic,” Kaheaku said. “It was in a real bad area, and the care wasn’t proper. So we needed to get him from there to the hospital he’s at now.”

With no insurance to get him from the first hospital to Bumrungrad was a costly endeavor - $15,000 – to be exact.

“That’s not even including the treatment, just the transfer,” Kaheaku said. “We’re not rich people where we have an extra $20,000 sitting in our account, so we had to scramble around and call up people and ask for help. So we ended up getting some donations in so we could move him.”

At the moment, McShane’s father is by his side in Thailand, while his mother deals with the insurance company Stateside to try and find some daylight to get their son home.

“They’re going through a lot of red tape because it’s a foreign country,” Kaheaku said.

As for McShane’s condition, the positive sign is that an MRI showed no signs of blunt trauma to the front or back of the brain, with the swelling appearing to have come from an infection, and not anything that happened in the gym or a fight. And if it is an infection, they will likely be able to treat it and get him back to full health.

“He has swelling in the middle of his brain, and the doctors said they’re not a hundred percent sure, but they believe it’s due to an infection inside the brain,” Kaheaku said. “They’re running more tests now to find out exactly what it is and how they can treat it. If it’s an infection, they can treat that and it will heal quicker. We can’t transport him until he wakes up and he’s better, but the hospital that he’s in now is a much better hospital, and they’re treating him really well.”

So now it’s just a waiting game, and a stark reminder that at any moment, someone’s life can take a turn no one expects. Talking to Morton and Kaheaku, it’s easy to gain an affection for McShane, even if you never met him before.

“He’s an amazing kid, and you can ask anyone that knows him,” Morton said. “He is the sweetest, most humble and most wonderful kid, and he comes from a really great family in Hawaii.”

As she puts it, family rolls pretty deep in Hawaii, and if you’ve followed any of the fighters that hail from the island, you’ll know that they also don’t mind scrapping. Yet as Kaheaku points out, McShane is cut from a different cloth from most.

“I was his boxing coach since he was a kid, and the majority of boxers you come across, when they get older they have a little chip on their shoulder and a bounce to their walk,” he said. “I train a lot of other fighters, and all my other fighters have that bounce and that little attitude. But this kid is one of the best who ever came out of my gym, and the most humble. He’s a church going man, he doesn’t swear, he’s a happy go lucky person, and he likes to dance and make everybody smile.”

Yet in Hawaii, when it comes to combat sports, mixed martial arts is the thing. So after McShane’s amateur career was done, it was pretty clear that for him to begin the road to a world title, he would have to leave home.

“They needed to keep him busy, and it’s so hard from the outside in Hawaii to get a proper hook,” Morton said. “They got a connection there, and it’s worked great for them.”

“We sent him to Thailand because in Hawaii the boxing scene is dead,” Kaheaku added. “We were hoping that Kalae could be the one that brings it back.”

One of McShane’s other coaches, Bobby Villaver, had a good connection in Thailand that allowed the youngster to ply his trade professionally and stay busy. Since October of 2014, he’s fought five times, won each bout, with three wins coming by knockout.

And though that promise he’s shown in the ring may never lead to a world title now, his friends and family are hoping that at least they will have him home soon and on the way to recovery and a healthy and happy life. That would be more important than any championship belts.

“It’s so unfortunate that this happened, because he’s the last kid that would ever deserve to be in something like this,” Kaheaku said.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to aid in medical bills for Kalae McShane. To donate, or for more information, click here.

http://www.gofundme.com/e2hcpvx6

Donations by check may be sent to:

OEFCU
Memo: Kalae McShane Donation
OE Federal Credit Union
2181 Lauwiliwili Street #120
Kapolei, Hawaii 96707

This situation sucks. To the top.