Even when Derek Wolfe was not of sound mind or body, his competitive instincts never betrayed him.

It was the final Saturday night of November, and while the Broncos were gathered for a team meeting at a Kansas City-area hotel conference room in preparation for the next day’s game against the rival Chiefs, their starting defensive end was coming out of a 26-hour, medically induced coma.

Hospital doctors made a mistake. They should have kept Wolfe comatose for at least 27 hours.

“I remember waking up and trying to rip the breathing tube out,” Wolfe said.

The first voice Wolfe heard was that of his brother, Josh Pastore, who had flown in from New Jersey. Wolfe had been trying for months to get his brother out to Colorado for a visit.

The first words Wolfe spoke: “About time.”

Then he saw Corey Oshikoya, the Broncos’ assistant trainer who had stayed with Wolfe from the moment Terrance Knighton yelled “Stop the bus!” from the back seat of the team bus to the airport a day earlier.

From his hospital bed in Denver, Wolfe asked “Osh” if he would be able to play against the Chiefs the next day in Kansas City.

Oshikoya reminded Wolfe that he was in an intensive care unit.

Last week, as he sat in the office of Broncos strength and conditioning coach Luke Richesson, Wolfe still was struggling to precisely describe how he had fallen so ill last season.

A 23-year-old elite athlete who was the first player the Broncos selected in the 2012 draft should not have stressed his nervous system to the point he was sleeping only two hours a night, losing weight no matter how much he ate, and getting loaded into the back of an ambulance with a heartbeat of 20 and blood-sugar level at 40. (The blood-sugar level should have been between 100 and 140, considering he had just eaten a meal.)

The Broncos drafted Wolfe with the No. 36 pick overall early in the second round as much for his fierce style as the fact that he was a rare 295-pound defensive tackle who had the agility to rush the quarterback.

But after getting six sacks and leading NFL rookie defensive linemen in playing time percentage, Wolfe’s second pro season began with two bouts of food poisoning and a preseason neck injury that was diagnosed as a contusion of the spinal cord. His weight dropped to 265 pounds, and he had only one sack through the Broncos’ first seven games.

Through it all, the maniacal Wolfe was training three times per day.

Doctors said Wolfe suffered a slight seizure during the team’s bus ride to Denver International Airport on Nov. 29, 2013. But what really happened is Wolfe short-circuited his nervous system. He had pushed his body to such extreme limits, his body couldn’t take it anymore.

He credits the Broncos’ medical team, led by trainer Steve “Greek” Antonopulos, and yoga classes with bringing him back.

“Yoga really helped connect my mind and body back together,” Wolfe said. “Because really the issue was my nervous system had become so disconnected from my body that I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t look like myself. I didn’t sound like myself. Nothing that was going on was me. I wasn’t playing like myself. Even during the season, I wasn’t playing like I normally play. The physicality I like to play with, I didn’t have it because I didn’t have the weight. I had the strength, but the weight wasn’t behind it.”

“Stop the bus!”

The day after Thanksgiving last year, Wolfe looked fine as he said hello to a reporter in the Broncos’ locker room. He was about to eat a big lunch. His weight was 275 — 10 pounds lighter than the weight he had settled on as a rookie, but also up 10 pounds from earlier in the season.

He had been playing well, getting sacks in three consecutive games through a key home division victory against the Chiefs on Nov. 17, which was a Sunday night national TV game.

The Broncos were about to play the Chiefs again, this time at Kansas City. As always, Wolfe headed to the back of the bus. He sat by himself in one row, just behind Shaun Phillips. Louis Vasquez was seated across the aisle. Von Miller was seated directly behind Wolfe and Knighton was behind Miller.

“Felt great at practice, felt good getting on the bus,” Wolfe said. “I get on the bus and it felt like I was getting carsick. That’s all it felt like. Next thing you know, I’m in a dead sweat. And my vision starts getting blurry. And then my teammates starting asking ‘What’s wrong?’ And I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t say anything. I could just feel my body shutting down.”

Wolfe’s teammates were confused at first, then scared.

“He was sleeping and Von looked at him and he was sweating profusely,” Knighton said. “There was sweat everywhere. That just didn’t look right. Me and Von were like, ‘Wolfe! Wolfe!’ And he wasn’t responding.”

A couple of players tried to wake him up, have him sip from a water bottle. NFL players have been long programmed to remain poised through tense situations. But serenity now wasn’t getting it done.

Knighton yelled: “Stop the bus!”

As Wolfe was being loaded into an ambulance, he started vomiting. Then he started fighting.

“They said I was so strong, they couldn’t hold me down,” Wolfe said. “I was ripping out of restraints. They had to induce a coma because I was so out of control.”

On game day, Sunday morning, Wolfe received a visit from coach John Fox and his wife, Robin. Fox was away from the team because of his own medical issue. The Broncos beat the Chiefs that day and after the team plane returned to Denver, Knighton and Miller went immediately to the hospital to check on their teammate.

Wolfe looked awful.

“I couldn’t really explain to the doctors how I was feeling,” Wolfe said. “I was going through serious depression. I had never dealt with that before.”

The stress of worrying about his neck injury, his weight loss and his performance had burdened him even before he was hospitalized.

“Then after that happened, (the depression) was twice as bad,” Wolfe said. “When you’re hurt and you’re feeling sorry for yourself, you’re going to go through a little depression. But the worst part of the aftereffects was, I would look in the mirror and I didn’t know who I was looking at. The issues I was having with problem-solving were ridiculous. I couldn’t feel any emotion.”

“Something’s wrong”

Near as Wolfe can figure, the first food poisoning episode before training camp, followed by a bad batch of spinach during camp, “started my downward spiral.”

His weight was down when the Broncos played a preseason game at Seattle on Aug. 17. Wolfe was high-lowed by two blockers and wound up leaving the field in an ambulance.

“Normally that wouldn’t have happened to me,” Wolfe said. “I’m normally confident when I play, but because I was light, I was fidgety. I felt like every time I hit somebody, I had to put everything I had behind it.”

He rested for three weeks, but he was in the Broncos’ starting lineup for the season opener against Baltimore. Looking back, he said, he probably should have taken more time off.

“Really, it was my fault,” Wolfe said. “I should have been more aware of what was going on. I had symptoms that I was not reporting, symptoms I was ignoring to myself because I was afraid of wondering if the issue was my neck. Really, it wasn’t my neck. The neck injury had something to do with me losing all that weight. And losing all that weight had something to do with my nervous system being screwed up.

“But the issue was, I didn’t rest after that neck injury. I didn’t let them let me rest. I felt fine. I was 100 percent. Greek was like, ‘Hey, you should rest.’ But if you feel fine, go. There were no signs that anything was wrong.”

Wolfe grinded through until Game 7 at Indianapolis, when a collision with a fullback shot pain through the neck area again. That’s when Wolfe started having headaches, and the pain prevented him from sleeping. Yet he had those sacks in Games 8, 9 and 10.

There was one more game, at New England, but no more after that.

Wolfe came back for one practice, on Christmas. He weighed 258 pounds that day.

“I thought it would make me feel better coming back and I get here and after I watched the film (of that practice), I was like, ‘Who is that out there?’ ” Wolfe said. “That’s not me. I was too small. I was moving around real lethargic. And while I was out there, I was getting these headaches.

“I went home and called my brother — he was back in Jersey — and I said, ‘Something’s wrong with me. I can’t move.’ “

Back in business

There were dark periods after the episode. Wolfe said his depression intensified. He shut himself inside his home. He kept his family away, except for his good friend “Cubby” and his brother Josh, who had returned from New Jersey to stay for a month.

About the only other people who could occasionally get through to him were the Millers.

“Von and his mom and his dad — his mom will call me still and make sure I’m all right,” Wolfe said. “Von’s like family.”

Wolfe said he was still in a fog through the Broncos’ AFC playoff victories over San Diego and New England. He started feeling like himself again the week of the Super Bowl.

“I was on the plane,” he said, “and I was like, ‘How am I not playing in this game? How could I be so stupid to let this happen?’ “

Wolfe had started yoga — and nothing more — in late January and continued on through March. He started lifting weights March 1.

When the Broncos started their conditioning program last week, Wolfe was a full participant. For dinner Tuesday night, he had a large rib-eye steak, two chicken breasts, corn on the cob, asparagus and mashed potatoes.

“And I was still hungry,” he said. “So my appetite is back. I stay away from fast food. But Ted’s Montana Grill has definitely helped me put weight on.”

Wolfe weighed 270 pounds March 1. He was at his playing weight of 285 last week. He might allow himself to get up to 295 by the start of training camp, which would give him 10 pounds to play with during the season.

“Honest to God, I feel better than I’ve ever felt,” Wolfe said. “In my whole life I’ve never felt this good. It just shows I needed that rest. The body needed to heal. I have no pain in my neck. I’m sleeping better than I’ve ever slept. I’m not on any kind of medicine. No supplements. Nothing.

“No doubt in my mind that I’m going to be better than I ever was.”

Mike Klis: mklis@denverpost.com or twitter.com/mikeklis

If only this Wolfe cried out

A timeline of what Broncos starting defensive end Derek Wolfe endured last season:

Training camp 2013: Wolfe gets food poisoning from spinach. It’s his second food poisoning episode in two months.

Aug. 17: Down at least 10 pounds because of the food poisoning, Wolfe says he didn’t feel like himself while he played in a preseason game at Seattle. Wolfe is high-lowed by two of the Seahawks and suffers a neck injury. He is carried off the field on a backboard and into an ambulance. Tests are negative, although Wolfe has suffered a contusion to the spinal cord. He is cleared to fly back to Denver with the Broncos.

Sept. 5: Wolfe makes a start and contributes four tackles to the Broncos’ season-opening victory over Baltimore in Denver.

Oct. 20: A collision with an Indianapolis Colts fullback shoots pain through Wolfe’s neck. He endures headaches and struggles to sleep afterward, but doesn’t report the symptoms. “You don’t want to let your team down,” he said. “We’re on a run. Plus, I had like (three) sacks in a row. So I’m thinking, ‘I can’t really stop now.’ “

Nov. 29: The Broncos’ buses leave for Denver International Airport and a trip for a game two days later against the Kansas City Chiefs. Wolfe falls asleep and starts sweating profusely. He can’t respond to teammates. Terrance Knighton calls for their bus to stop and for medical personnel. Wolfe receives his second ambulance ride in three months. He is placed in a medically induced coma for 26 hours and spends four days in a hospital before he is released.

Christmas: His weight down to 258 pounds, Wolfe practices for the first time since his episode on the bus. But he again falls ill after practice and is shut down for the season. “When you’re down like that,” he said, “it’s always in the back of your head: ‘Wonder if I can’t play anymore?’ But as soon as I got that thought, I’d snap it out of my head. No way. Nothing’s going to keep me down.”

Late January 2014: Wolfe begins taking yoga classes three times a week. He credits yoga for helping him feel healthy again.

March 1: Wolfe’s weight is back up to 270 pounds. He starts a light weightlifting program under the direction of Broncos strength coach Luke Richesson.

April 21: The Broncos begin their offseason conditioning program. Wolfe is a full participant.

April 22: For dinner, Wolfe has a rib-eye steak, two chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and asparagus. His weight is up to 285 pounds.

Mike Klis, The Denver Post