Every time he hits the ball it feels like he's sticking his hand in a pot of boiling water. Excruciating pain when he wakes up, excruciating pain when he's in class, excruciating pain all day long.

That is a day in the life of Penn State men's volleyball player Zach Slenker.

Slenker, an All-American senior and co-captain of the No. 9 volleyball team in the country, has extreme nerve damage in his right hand and, instead of sitting out his senior season, he's playing through pain, a feat that to many would seem unthinkable.

It all started last season when Slenker, then a junior, broke his hitting hand in November. His hand healed before the start of last season and everyone believed that Slenker would come back his senior season playing the best volleyball of his life. All of that was in line until the beginning of February.

It was then that Slenker began to feel numbness and tingling in the hand that he had broken 15 months before. Slenker's hand was swollen and he went to a doctor thinking that he had broken every finger in his hand.

"Eventually my hand starting turning dark bluish purple and I had to be seen by a doctor at Ohio State," Slenker said.

Since then Slenker has gone to doctor after doctor, hand specialist to hand specialist, until finally he found a doctor who could help him in Lancaster.

The doctor explained to Slenker that after a traumatic injury, like a broken hand, the nerves in that area could become damaged. He told Slenker that the pain sensors in his hand were basically stuck in the "on" position. While there is no cure for this syndrome, there are outpatient treatments that Slenker has undergone three times since February.

The treatments include sticking a foot-long needle through Slenker's throat or armpit to hit the nerves in his right shoulder. After each treatment Slenker's arm and hand are completely paralyzed for the next two days. The idea behind the procedure is that if the doctors could turn the nerves off, when they turn back on, they may correct themselves.

"It's definitely been working," Slenker said of the treatment. "The first time I got it done 50 percent of the pain was gone."

But instead of taking the rest of the season off while trying to heal, Slenker's doctors told him that he should keep the hand active.

"They told me that if I don't keep playing or if I'm not doing something, this could eventually make me crippled," Slenker said.

Even though he was told to play through the injury that doesn't make the pain any easier to handle, but he is starting to tolerate it more and more.

"I hit the ball a couple of hundred times a day and it hurts every time," Slenker said. "I've done that for the last two months and I kind of think that that's my own way of building my pain tolerance up."

Slenker missed six games this season, but made his return on March 7 in Provo, Utah, against national power BYU.

He returned to the Nittany Lions' lineup with some flair, contributing nine kills in the loss.

But Slenker knows that he isn't the same player that he was earlier in the season.

"I'm not as good as I was before," Slenker said. "I can't hit the ball as hard as I used to because psychologically I know that it's going to hurt as soon as I hit the ball."

While Slenker understands that Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik isn't extremely happy with his power, he knows that his coaches and teammates are behind him 100 percent.

"In the games I'm sure I still frustrate them because I'm not playing as well as I used to," Slenker said, "but they've all been supportive and they always check up on me, making sure I'm all right."

When it all comes down to it Pavlik knows that this team isn't the same without Slenker on the court and he knows that his co-captain will never quit.

"I've never seen Zach take a play off in his five years in this gym," Pavlik said. "There's a will and a confidence when Zach is out there that the rest of the team feeds off of."

With the regular season coming to an end and the pressure of playoff volleyball on the horizon, Slenker's game will only get stronger, physically and mentally, showing everyone that his love for the game is a lot stronger than any pain that could be inflicted upon him.