A note on Damar Hamlin
Jordon Rooney, the Bills safety’s marketing representative and friend, told ESPN’s Coley Harvey Wednesday morning that doctors saw encouraging signs overnight in Hamlin’s condition after he went into cardiac arrest Monday night during a game against the Bengals.
“Per Jordon and Damar’s family, doctors overnight got promising readings that they had been hoping to see by this morning. Jordon couldn’t go into specifics, but progress appears to be made,” Harvey wrote on Twitter, adding that Hamlin remains sedated and in critical condition in the ICU at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
I believe that indicates the situation is as I wrote yesterday. I’ll add that I based what I wrote partly on knowledge I gained by observing the protocol when a loved one had a cardiac arrest and was hospitalized afterwards. This is from yesterday’s post on the matter:
To get back to Hamlin – he is now reported to be sedated and in critical condition. That almost certainly means he is being purposely kept in a coma, cooled, and has been placed on a breathing tube. That is pretty much standard procedure after a cardiac arrest of any real duration. What they will probably do in the next few days is periodically withdraw the coma-inducing drugs for a short while at a time in order to test his reflexes and then later to see whether he can follow simple commands such as to squeeze a person’s finger. Those tests are to evaluate whether he is retaining function and what his long-term prognosis might be. Then if all goes well, they take him out of the coma and off the breathing tube on a certain schedule as he heals. He could make a full recovery, although he certainly might not, and anything in between, depending on how oxygen-deprived he was for how long. Prayers go out for a full recovery.
So my guess is that the “promising readings” involve things like reflexes and responses to simple commands like “squeeze my finger” and “wiggle your left toe.” I used to think that they did brain EEGs right away, but (at least back when I was the hospital observer) I learned they don’t usually do that till three days of non-responsiveness have passed. Luckily, Hamlin already is responding so a scan of that sort may not be necessary.
They also have probably done all sorts of tests on his heart already. Nothing was said about that, but my guess (and it’s just a guess at this point, and probably a hope as well) is that it’s basically healthy and that the cardiac arrest was just a freak one-time thing for him, perhaps from the chest blow but perhaps not. I hope the family will decide to release more complete medical information on that.
Creighton basketball player Josh Jones fainted in the locker room before the Dec. 12, 2012, game against the Huskers in Lincoln. He had a pre-existing heart issue but had been cleared to play years ago.
The rescue squad came into the locker room and took him to the hospital. His teammates saw that.
The Huskers fans were wild to beat us that year as we had Doug McDermott. We were still in the mid-level Missouri Valley Conference and the Corn was in the Big 12.
I was at the game and up in the rafters. We popped the Corn in the mouth at the opening and never looked back. McBucketts went off for 27. We won by 22 and it was never close.
That was the single most remarkable team athletic performance I have ever seen. The players didn’t know if their friend or teammate was dead while we were playing our rival. In the stands, we knew none of this.
Josh Jones retired from basketball. He’s a very sunny guy and he has a job as the “hype” person at the games. Saw him last night.
This is absolutely NOT “good” in any sense of the word, other than he’s not dead–he should have been awake on the field, if he suffered commotio cordis as a “freak one time thing” and was defibrillated successfully.
If things were good, he never would have required mechanical ventilation.
Let alone days of it.
Not necessarily insurmountably bad, but there is not a thing “good” about where he is today.
Pray–he needs some Divine intervention.
Lee:
Oh, so you know the protocol? I know from what happened to a person close to me who suffered cardiac arrest and made a full and complete recovery that the signs reported for Hamlin are promising and there is some chance of a full recovery.
As I understand it, the induced coma and the ventilation are the standard and correct treatment when spontaneous breathing failed to restart after the injury. No one should expect much of any real news until at least tomorrow evening, three days after the event.
His survival so far puts him ahead of many who suffer sudden cardiac arrest.
Kate:
Agreed.
There have been some comments to the effect that Hamlin suffered some sort of lung damage from the CPR compressions. This is possible. They told us in training not to worry about hurting the patient with the compressions, because the need is to save the life. Injuries can be dealt with if the patient survives. A broken rib is much better than death.
What a thing. Young people near death – as it happens, our son, a year older than this poor kid, is on a plane right now, flying to the bedside of a college friend who will die in the next day or two.
Awful to face the prospect, much less the reality. I’m hoping and praying that Hamlin makes a full recovery.
Far as I knew, at high school graduation, only one person who would have been in our graduating class had died. Leukemia in the eighth grade. That included auto accidents and anything else.
And for college…nobody I knew died before graduation. Two died of cancer in the next ten years, that I knew of, and then there was the war which, for today’s purposes, doesn’t count.
My kids grew up in a pleasant midwestern small town near a bigger town. A real town with its own identity, not a collection of subdivisions.
Of their graduating class, half a dozen died before graduating. Auto accidents, heart issue, couple I don’t recall.
Different times, maybe. Luck, maybe. But some of my friends in the same age group in other areas…same kind of bad luck.
I guess I was lucky.
Neo:
I have a near relative who just suffered a cardiac arrest (CA) in the last couple of months – one of the rare (< 20%) non- hospital CA survivors. Fortunately, CPR was started very quickly.
His stay in the hospital was approximately a week and a half with the first few days in a medically induced coma just as you have described.
It seems like they initially gave the body a time to recover from the trauma and initially tested for basics like reflexes to try to determine the extent of any brain damage suffered from any oxygen deprivation. Gradually he was brought out of coma in a measured way with other appropriate measures such as the hand squeezing and answering questions.
It seemed like your description was probably classic SOP for CA.
There is rejoicing as each challenge is successfully mastered and this could be what the family is “excited” about.
Patriot Dan:
I hope your relative makes a full recovery. It sounds like he is on the road for that. When the person I know had a cardiac arrest he was also not in the hospital at the time but was resuscitated quickly enough by the EMTs so that he did not sustain brain damage, or at least not discernible brain damage. It is rare, as you say, to do that well, and I was very grateful. I think his total time in the ICU was about 11 days, then a couple of days in a regular room, and then home, but it took a few months for full recovery.
“Far as I knew, at high school graduation, only one person who would have been in our graduating class had died.”
A guy in my high school class, basketball player, dropped dead, either just before our senior year started or in the first week, during a pickup game. A game which had been loosely organized by the basketball coach with some of the players who had graduated a year or more before. This was turned into some minor hullabaloo in the news and such insinuating that his death was somehow brought on due to playing too hard against “older” athletes. Like he was a 6th grader playing against the pros or something. Like that would even matter. This was in 1979.
I did see this stat yesterday. From 1966 – 2004 there were about 1100 cardiac incidents involving professional athletes. Since the vax started to be administered, there have been 1600 incidents in basically 3 years as opposed to 38 years.
Seneca
Pretty sure we’re covering the same countries and same sports? Thirty years ago, some places may not have been organized–war, independence, etc–to have pro sports as they might now.
A woman I dated in college died at age 53. I had not talked to her in over 25 years and remembered her as as healthy and spunky. It was a shock. I wondered how many people die at age 53 so I looked up a mortality table on the web. What I learned is that about 90% of a group born the same year live to age 60. About 80% live to age 70. About 50% live to age 80. About 10% live to age 90. Almost no one makes it to age 100.
I am 68 years old and my high school class is right on track. Of 400 classmates we are at the point where we should expect about 2 or 3 deaths per year, and the rate accelerates to one per month a few years from now.
The only things for sure is that the government will not tell the truth or allow tests that give useful information. Ignorance is for your own good.
I discovered recently that an old neighbor of mine with whom I was acquainted from 1969 to 1984 has died, not recently but in 2016. Not sure how I missed it. We hadn’t spoken in decades, but we’ve been no more than two degrees of separation in the years since. The obituary offered that she’d succumbed to ‘a short illness’, which I’m going to guess was a galloping cancer or a cancer discovered too late to treat. She never smoked so far as I’m aware and both she and her sister took up athletic hobbies as they aged. (Her sister does triathalons and sold her mother on them; her preferred exercise was hiking and biking in the mountains). About 93% of her immediate contemporaries were still alive at the time she died. Her mother and father (each 81 years of age as we speak – they were young parents in their day) have great-grandchildren, but they’ve had to bury one of their children and one of their grandchildren in the last ten years.
Reports are Hamlin’s heart stopped a second time, after the first time during the game. I am hopeful he lives, but not optimistic. Recently had a family member have a cardiac arrest. He survived, but barely, and only after extensive collateral damage due to the measures to revive him.
Another family friend, and one in a much healthier state of life, had a sudden cardiac arrest similar to what Hamlin experienced (this was long before Covid). Medical techs kept him from dying, but the best in brightest at Johns Hopkins couldn’t bring him back to life.
When we get reports of Hamlin awake and talking my expectations of his recovery will change.
The Bills are reporting that Hamlin is awake. Doctors say he is “neurologically intact” and his lung injury is healing. This doesn’t mean he’s really totally okay. That takes a while to determine, and even if he’s going to be totally healed, it will take time.
ESPN link: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35385154/damar-hamlin-shows-remarkable-improvement-remains-critical-condition
Invisible Sun:
The report that his heart stopped twice was erroneous.
I will not comment on prognosis although I have resuscitated a number of cardiac arrest victims. My objection to the mandatory vaccine was about making this mandatory in a very low risk population.
Mike K,
I completely agree with you. Between their young age and the off label drug and supplement regimen developed by Dr Peter McCollough, few young people needed to be vaccinated. It’s still shocking to me that with the studies done by McCollough and many others, that the CDC is still pushing the vaccine for young people.
Mike K:
I’ve been against making the vaccine mandatory for anyone, but especially for young people.
senecagriggs:
Ever heard of the concept of offering a LINK for statistics? There is no way to check what you’re referring to.
But the actual statistics can be found here and at other sites.
Something to think about. There appears to be a decent chance that the cause of his collapse was due to Commotio Cordis, which apparently is more often than not, fatal. It apparently occurs when someone is hit just right hard in the chest at the wrong tie in a heart beat. I am thinking that this guy maybe alive today, thanks to the quick medical attention he got on the field.
The thing though is, that apparently, there is very often an undiagnosed heart issue involved too. Dr Malone points out that his team requires complete COVID-19 vaccinations in order to play, and there is a possibility that that may have caused enough vaccine injury to his heart to cause Commotio Cordis, when hit just right in the chest. We just don’t know enough yet.
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/cardiac-arrest-in-athletes
Bruce Hayden:
My very first comment about what happened to Hamlin mentioned that I thought it might be Commotio Cordis (see this). However, I believe you are confusing that with another phenomenon that also sometimes occurs in young athletes, cardiac arrest without Commotio Cordis (in other words, without a blow to the chest disrupting the rhythm). Cardiac arrest in athletes without a blow to the chest sometimes does involve some sort of pre-existing cardiac problem, but Commotio Cortis does not.
In addition, when they did a workup of Hamlin, I am virtually certain they checked for myocarditis. So far, no one has indicated he had it. I suppose it’s still possible that he had it and they just haven’t said it, but at this point I don’t think it’s likely that he had it.