Afterward, as he and his Illinois teammates celebrated their victory, Meyer – at 140 pounds, not exactly packed with muscles even when he’s healthy -- tried to lift the trophy. He didn’t have the strength. His roommate and best friend Nick Hardy had to help him.

“That week, he played like a stud and carried us to another win,” Hardy said. “I remember a lot of visits to the restroom. He picked us up, but we had his back, too. It was a pretty amazing achievement under the circumstances.”

The team jumped on the plane that night and headed home. At 6:30 a.m. the next morning, Meyer was taken to the hospital for tests. He underwent a colonoscopy, but the procedure couldn’t be completed because his intestines were so inflamed. He spent the next few nights in the hospital as doctors assessed the situation.

At one point, Meyer was asked about his health history and the medications he had used. He told the doctors that as a middle school student, he once took Accutane to battle an acne problem.

First sold in 1982, Accutane was effective in clearing acne but had been linked to serious side effects, including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). According to Drugwatch.com, more than 7,000 lawsuits in the U.S. had been filed by users against the drug’s manufacturer, but in 2014, a judge dismissed the majority of those lawsuits, and jury verdicts favoring the plaintiff were overturned. The website reports that a New Jersey appellate court reinstated more than 2,000 of those lawsuits last year, and the state’s Supreme Court is now considering whether to allow those lawsuits to move forward.

As for Accutane, the drug was taken off the U.S. market 2009 by its Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, in part because generic drugs had undercut sales. “This was an economical decision driven by falling market share,” a corporate spokesman told Reuters.

With this knowledge of the drug’s controversial history, Meyer’s doctors made their diagnosis. Since the problems were located in his large intestine, it was determined he had ulcerative colitis and not Crohn’s disease, another IBD that affects other parts of the gastrointestinal tract.

“There’s nothing in my family, no history of everything, and I’m not a stressful person at all. I’m pretty laid back,” said Meyer. “So I told the doctor that, and they just kind of did some more investigation on it and they narrowed it down just to that. I got a bad hand, a bad deal on that – and now I just have to move forward.”

Zach Guthrie, the former Illinois assistant who recruited Meyer as part of his last recruiting class before leaving the school in 2012 to become a full-time PGA TOUR caddie, followed the news from afar. He was confident Meyer could overcome the disease.

“I didn’t talk to him about this,” Guthrie said, “but I imagine his mindset was, OK, this is just like I have 155 yards into the wind on a left-to-right lie. There’s a process I can go through to deal with this problem. You can apply the same thing to that. But I’m sure he had to have some moments where he was disappointed that it happened to him. There’s not anything you can do about that.”

Meyer was determined not to feel sorry for himself, and the best way to overcome those emotions was to get back on the course and compete. After being released from the hospital later that week – 10 pounds lighter, by the way – he traveled with his team to the NCAA Regionals at Purdue and convinced Small he was ready to play.

His system full of pain medication and steroids, Meyer finished T-28, but the fact that he was able to play all three rounds was a small miracle in itself. His roommate Hardy, meanwhile, tied for medalist honors as Illinois advanced to the NCAA Championship.

“I was dead,” Meyer said. “I was a zombie out there. I was hitting it 10 yards less, 15 yards less than I was normally hit it. Just trying to grind my way around there – chipping and putting was the big key of mine. … To be at 50, 60 percent, I felt pretty good about that finish.”

He felt even better at Rich Harvest Farms, the host site for the NCAAs in Sugar Grove, Illinois. Meyer shot 71-67-69 in the first three rounds to advance to the individual championship, while his team reached the semifinals before being bounced by eventual champion Oklahoma. On the final day, though, Meyer had little energy left, shooting a 77 to tie for sixth.

Still, it was an impressive result given what had happened to him a month earlier – not that anyone who knew him was truly surprised.