Nashua's Justin Deflumeri pushes ahead during one of the many road races he's competed in, either alone or as part of a triathlon, after coming back from four years of treatment for a spinal fluid leak.(Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – The time had come. Justin Deflumeri had been through a lot over a five year span, both mentally and physically.

He got on the treadmill, but set the incline low to 2.0.

“I was once going to go pro in boxing, and now I’m proud of myself for going 2.0 on the treadmill?” Deflumeri said he was thinking at the time. “But then I just started increasing and increasing …”

And will be training for an Iron Man Triathlon in September. But this is all after a four-plus year ordeal in which half the time Deflumeri was bedridden.

When we last saw Deflumeri, he was building a baseball program at Nashua Community College back in 2013. But a year or two later the school at the time opted to discontinue athletics, and that left Deflumeri with unexpected free time.

So he began working out, and besides playing baseball in various adult leagues, he took up boxing. He was around 215 pounds, and he went from 215 to 178 pounds in nearly three months, as his goal was to fight competitively. Diet and working out five hours a day did the trick for the Methuen, Mass. native who moved to Nashua after college in 2011 and has been here since.

Eventually, that led to a charity boxing event in Boston, and Deflumeri was hooked, and then he fought in the Golden Gloves in Lowell, Mass., getting a silver medal in 2016.

He fought twice in 2017, but a couple of months after his last fight he started coming down with headaches that worsened. When he want to a local hospital, because of his physical activity doctors were fearing a brain bleed. Deflumeri underwent a CT scan that showed no issues. So the next step was a procedure that may have led to a series of issues that lasted for not months, but a couple of years.

“I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was 2017,” Deflumeri said, who was 28 at the time, said. He noted doctors, still with the brain bleed concerns, had him undergo a lumbar puncture, as he was told that was the best way to test the blood around the brain.

“They had me sign a waiver and I trusted the process,” he said.

However, it took three tries to get the sample needed, but the results were negative and Deflumeri went home.

“The next day I woke up, and I could not stand up,” he said. “I had the most blistering headaches ever, and they were positional, so if I stood up my neck felt like it was going to fall off. And it felt like ‘icy hot’ was on my hamstring and toes.'”

His wife at the time rushed him to the hospital. He was admitted,and laid flat for seven days. Deflumeri was suffering, he suspected from what’s known as a CSF leak – or a leak of fluid from the spine, a very serious condition. The suspicion was that it was complications from the lumbar puncture.

He was eventually sent home, laid flat for weeks, and suffered vertigo anytime he got up.

“I wasn’t living life,” he said. “I was just living to survive.”

The doctors appointments were many – over 30, by his count. He was out of work on disability, did research on his condition, and joined a support group on Facebook for those suffering from the same affliction.

“I found a whole world of people who were written off, who had the same complications that you never hear about from epidurals and lumbar punctures,” he said. “And there I started talking to them, and they were all stuck in bed too.”

And that’s when Deflumeri was convinced he was suffering from spinal leak, and found that only two places in the country were the best at treating them. One was Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and the other was Duke University Hospital.

With nothing but time, he started writing to doctors, getting medical records, forwarding them. Three months of being bedridden for the most part, from the fall of 2017 through Christmas, was enough.

“I had had six fights, and what got me through it was the mental preparation that I got from the fights,” he said. “But the toughest thing was fighting was part of my life for four years. You get punched in the ring, you hide it from people. But I couldn’t hide this pain.”

The next question had to be was what caused the headaches in the first place? Deflumeri later discovered it was a rare inner ear condition that had nothing to do with blows from his boxing.

Deflumeri pursued Duke since it was closer, and his case was finally accepted. The only problem was a lengthy wait list.

It turned out what Deflumeri needed was a procedure known in laymen’s terms as a “blood patch.”

“The big misconception I found out is that doctors feel (the spinal leak) will heal on its own,” Deflumeri said. “That’s the big misconception.”

After three months he was able to walk and stand up, but it took him until 2019 to get into Duke for the necessary procedure, which takes blood out of his arm and injects it into his spine to seal the leak. After a week he flew home, and finally, after a few months and physical therapy, most of his symptoms were gone.

Fast forward to 2020, when Deflumeri was able to get back on a baseball field, playing in adult leagues around the Boston area. He had been a catcher, but thanks to this, his squatting behind the plate days were over, so he became a pitcher. But he could still hit, and was an All-Star in one league with a .419 batting average.

But while his boxing days may be done, good health has created an athletic monster. Deflumeri began running 5K races and became addicted to it. “The reason I fell in love with it was it was the same as fighting,” he said. “You want to quit, it’s a battle with yourself, you get nervous, are you going to finish … I was chasing that high, because I never stopped wanting to fight but now you don’t want to get hit in the head after losing spinal fluid, right?”

So Deflumeri decided to, as he said, “push it.” He began doing triathlons, and just came back from one in Sarasota, Fla. and Saturday finished third in a half-marathon in Daytona, Fla. The last triathlon he finished 12th in his division, and he has another here in March. And he had recently done a half marathon in just under two hours – a day or two before his latest triathlon.

What is driving him?

“I remember a time when I couldn’t even go to the bathroom,” he said. “Embarrassing coming from baseball, boxing and jiu jitsu before,” he said. “What drives me is there’s tons of people in my support group I’m still in that wish they could just go and take a shower by themselves, and they can’t.

“If I can be their outlet to not give up – I was like that for two years with the same symptoms. There are some people who have had symptoms for 14 years and are still trying to get into these (specialized treatment hospitals). Or have gotten in, and one blood patch didn’t work and now they have to re-apply. I do it for them and to get my story out.”

The medical comeback aside, one of the biggest disappointments for Deflumeri will always be the loss of the baseball program at NCC, as the plug was pulled about eight years ago on athletics there. He had built up the program to the point where it could at least be competitive with depth.

“I had players crying,” he said. “It was when we were starting to grow, and a lot of work went into that. … I miss coaching a lot.”

And he thinks maybe he’ll want to get back into that, as he misses the interaction with players. One of his old assistants from his NCC days runs an AAU baseball team and he may be his assistant this spring/summer – when he’s not playing or competing in races/triathlons or jiu jitsu tournaments. He won a championship in one of those in Derry in 2022.

If he had to think of one thing that got him through everything, what would it be?

“Just that hope of life again,” he said. “I wanted to be a dad, and I didn’t want to go out like that. I wanted to have that fighter mentality, because at some point you really do feel like you’re going to die. I didn’t want that to be it. Fighting for the next day.”

For work, Deflumeri owns his own safety training company (CPR, safety compliance, etc.). So he’s able to do things on his schedule.

“I never thought I’d do these races,” he said, noting he

He’s overplayed everything in his head, and doesn’t really know what he could have done differently. He remembers asking the question, “Do I really need this procedure?” and was told it was to judge whether he was suffering from any brain injury.

He did a Brazilian jiu jitsu competition in Derry, and in training he went very light.

“You get those weird twists and turns,” he said. “But that’s when

He got a tattoo of a warrior shield, because, as he said, “I’m going to go out like a warrior. … It’s all fallen into place.”

After his life was starting to fall so far out of place.

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