a Bills-Bengals game. AP Photo/Greg M. Cooper, File
Damar Hamlin’s recovery weaved bond between rival Bills, BengalsBy Mark Cannizzaro
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Three weeks ago, they were a family, bonded together by a singular and powerful cause: the well-being of Damar Hamlin.
On Jan. 2 at Cincinnati, in one of the most anticipated games of the season, the players and coaches from the Bills and Bengals hugged and knelt in prayer together when the Buffalo safety fell frighteningly into cardiac arrest after making what appeared to be a routine tackle on Bengals receiver Tee Higgins.
The Bills and Bengals players and coaches made the decision together to halt the game after Hamlin went down and needed to be administered CPR on the field to save his life — regardless of whether the game would be resumed, replayed or canceled altogether, and however the postseason seeding implications may be altered.
The only thing that mattered on that night was Hamlin’s safety and recovery.
There has been much healing since that scary night, in both Buffalo and Cincinnati.
Thankfully — and perhaps miraculously — Hamlin is on what appears to be a hugely positive and steady road to recovery.
Since he was released from the Cincinnati hospital, where he lay in a medically induced coma for a couple of days after the game, Hamlin has returned home to Buffalo and has been making regular visits to the Bills’ facility to see his teammates and coaches.
Tee Higgins, who was tackled by Hamlin before the safety went
into cardiac arrest, showed deep support for his well-being.
And though the Bills and Bengals players who were on that field together on that fateful night will forever be bonded, all of that will be placed on a back burner for three hours starting at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon at Highmark Stadium, where they play each other in the AFC divisional playoff with a berth into the AFC Championship game in the balance.
The Bills had their cathartic moment when they played the Patriots in the regular-season finale at Highmark on an emotionally charged Sunday two weeks ago. Their victory in that game clinched the No. 2 seed in the AFC postseason and home-field advantage for the game Sunday.
Allen helped rally the Bills, along with the rest of the football world,
in supporting Hamlin’s recovery. Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images
The Bills believe they’ve become strengthened by the Hamlin experience and
the positive fallout that’s come with his remarkable recovery. “I think it gives you a sturdier foundation,’’ quarterback Josh Allen told reporters this week.
“The more struggle, the more adversity that you can see over the course of the year,
it just makes you stronger. We’ve been in some really weird situations this year that not a lot of teams have ever gone through. Being able to have that under our belts, understand those emotions in those situations, and just try to use it to our advantage.” It has, indeed, been a trying year in Buffalo.
The area has been dealt two deadly winter storms that cost dozens of lives and disrupted the football schedule and a racist shooting at a supermarket last May that left 10 people dead.
The team also endured the death of tight end Dawson Knox’s younger brother Luke in August. The Hamlin scare was something that could have broken Buffalo … except it’s pretty much impossible to break Buffalo, which prides itself on its relentless resilience.
story struck a massive emotional chord around the country and had
a profound effect on people who hadn’t even heard of him before.
Damar Hamlin Collapses and Suffers Cardiac Arrest After a Hard Hit
“There was a rallying together,” Cincinnati center Ted Karras said.
“The whole entire country was united — more unity than I’ve seen in
a long time. Everybody was watching that game. That was the biggest
game of the year up to that point, ‘Monday Night Football,’
the entire universe watching.
“The cities are very similar — very passionate fan bases, care about football, care about their players, very knowledgeable fan bases. I was glad to see two cities could really come together in prayer and donations and all sorts of support for the Bills organization and Damar and his family.
Bengals head coach Zac Taylor said he believes the teams “will always be connected through’’ the Hamlin experience. To see Damar getting healthier as time passes and
see where it has ended up, there is always going to be a strong connection between
the two organizations,’’ Taylor said. “And that’s a good thing.”
A heart doctor answers 4 key questions about the NFL player’s injury.
© Provided by Inverse
Medical staff gave Hamlin CPR and shocked him with a defibrillator, restarting his heart’s rhythm. News outlets immediately began speculating that Hamlin may have suffered from commotio cordis — a potentially lethal stoppage of the heart caused by a strong impact on a person’s chest.
The next day, the Bills announced that Hamlin had indeed experienced
“cardiac arrest” but did not confirm whether the cause was commotion cordis.
Wendy Tzou is an associate professor of medicine and the medical director of cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and was watching the game when Hamlin collapsed. The Conversation asked Tzou four
questions about what may have happened. Her answers are adapted below.
4. What is commotio cordis?
Commotio cordis can happen to a person with a typical heart and occurs when blunt trauma to a person’s chest — often while playing sports — leads to cardiac arrest, where their heart stops pumping blood. Commotio cordis, also typically, occurs in children and adolescents. The impact needs to be forceful and occur at a very particular moment in the heart’s electrical cycle.
When this happens, the normally well-organized electrical signals that control the heart become chaotic. The uncoordinated electrical pulses cause the heart, and in particular, the large blood-pumping chambers called the ventricles, to twitch and spasm in what is known as ventricular fibrillation, a type of heart arrhythmia.
When a heart is in ventricular fibrillation, it is no longer able to pump blood
throughout a person’s body, and its organs begin to suffer damage due to a lack of oxygen. Heart attacks, abnormal heart or artery structure, and many other issues can lead to ventricular arrhythmia. Regardless of the cause, if a person’s heart stops beating, the result can be deadly.
3. How can a physical impact cause a lethal arrhythmia?
A single heartbeat is a very coordinated series of muscle contractions that are all controlled by precise electrical signals. After the muscles in a heart contract, they need to reset and prepare for the next beat. This process, called repolarization, involves moving electrically charged ions to different parts of a cell so that the cell can effectively contract when it receives an electrical signal.
If a person gets hit in the chest during the fraction of a second that repolarization is occurring, the impact can trigger some of the electrical signals before the heart is ready. This disrupts the whole system, resulting in a chaotic electrical storm that throws the
heart into spasms.
2. Do doctors believe it was commotio cordis?
Although Hamlin was able to stand upright immediately after the impact, it was only briefly. It was clear from the way he collapsed without making any effort to protect himself that no blood was getting to his brain. The fact that he received CPR and a shock from a defibrillator also showed that he was experiencing an arrhythmia or electrical disturbance of the heart. But it is not possible to diagnose commotio cordis from a video alone.
The reason many doctors are speculating that commotio cordis was the reason for Hamlin’s heart failure is that it occurred right after he collided with another player and that the impact could have been responsible. But, in most cases, a diagnosis is only made after an autopsy when all other potential causes of arrhythmia have been ruled out. Though more common among children and adolescents than adult athletes, commotio cordis is so rare that it is hard to get reliable information on the number of occurrences.
In a registry of patients who died from sudden arrhythmia in Minnesota, only 224 cases over a 15-year period were caused by commotio cordis.
Usually, when a healthy athlete experiences sudden cardiac arrest, the cause is one of two more common conditions. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is when the walls of a person’s heart thicken and can cause sudden arrhythmia with no prior symptoms. Roughly 1 in 200 U.S. residents have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. A person usually inherits the condition, and multiple family members are often affected, so many people are diagnosed well before they begin playing competitive sports. However, some cases do slip through the cracks, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is responsible for about 21 percent of sudden arrhythmia deaths in athletes.
The second most common cause of fatal heart rhythms in athletes is abnormalities
in the structure of a coronary artery. These abnormalities are present at birth and can compromise blood flow to the heart, sometimes resulting in issues during exercise. Around 1 percent of people have an issue with the structure of their coronary arteries,
and the problem is responsible for about 14 percent of cardiac deaths in athletes.
1. How can people protect themselves from sudden and fatal arrhythmia?
Commotio cordis is a rare occurrence but does happen in sports, including boxing, baseball, or football where blunt trauma directly to the chest is common. Appropriate precautions, like using chest padding, are the most effective way to prevent commotio cordis.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, coronary artery problems, and other heart problems that may predispose someone to dangerous heart rhythms may be found through screening. Your doctor can offer advice on whether screening could be beneficial to you or your family members.
No matter the cause, if a person’s heart stops pumping blood and oxygen isn’t getting
to their brain, time is everything. Call 911 and start CPR immediately to delay the onset
of brain damage or death until a defibrillator can hopefully restart the heart’s normal rhythm.
This article was originally published on The Conversation
by Wendy Tzou at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Read the original article here.
In a six-minute video released Saturday, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin
Spoke at-length for the first time since suffering a near-fatal cardiac arrest after making
a tackle during a Week 17 game against the Cincinnati Bengals. In the introduction to the video, Hamlin explains that he waited to speak until the time was right, explaining that his situation was a lot to process mentally, physically, and spiritually while also citing the end of the Bills’ season.
Hamlin began by expressing his gratitude and appreciation for the support that
has been extended towards him, before thanking an extensive amount of people and groups. 𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐫 𝐇𝐚𝐦𝐥𝐢𝐧 on Twitter: “From the Heart. -Sincerely 3! Full video: https://t.co/cmLCEZwRA4 https://t.co/6zvTDg7h1W” / Twitter
The 24-year-old has been active on social media, even live-tweeting during several Bills games, but he wanted to wait for the “right time” to share a message on video. “Now that my brothers have closed out a strong, winning season, as I continue to make so much progress recovering, I think it’s finally a good time to share a few things,” he said in an Instagram post on Saturday.
“I think it was important for me to wait and speak publicly at the right time, as it was just a lot to process within my own self mentally, physically, even spiritually, it’s just been a lot to process. But I can’t tell you how appreciative I am of all the love, all the support, and everything that’s just been coming my way.
“What happened to me on Monday Night Football I feel is a direct example of God using me as a vessel to share my passion and my love directly from my heart with the entire world, and I’m able to give it back to kids and communities all across the world who need it the most, and that’s always been my dream. That’s always been what I stood for and what I’ll continue to stand for.”
He went on to thank the Bills medical staff and doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical center, who “acted willfully and skillfully to save my life.”
He also gave gratitude to friends who checked up on him via text and visits, and thanked football fans all over for their support.
“With this happening to me, I didn’t feel anything short of the love, and it really helped me stay encouraged to get through the toughest moments and the toughest times. I really can’t thank you enough…
“Just to put team allegiance aside, to root for one kid’s life and just the humanity of a player that’s wearing Buffalo blue, to put humanity above team loyalty, you showed the world unity over division. I’m, not surprised by it, but I’m deeply grateful.
I’ll be forever thankful and indebted to that…”
“I couldn’t do this without any of the support and the love, and I can’t wait to
continue to take y’all on this journey with me.” Hamlin made an appearance at
the Bills’ matchup against the Bengals on Sunday.
He ended his video by making a heart with his hands.
!Full video: Daar Hamlin <3 on Instagram: “From the Heart . -sincerely 3
Bills: Damar Hamlin posts heartfelt message on social media (atozsports.com)
Great Video from #Da
ar Hamlin from The Heart ️!https://www.picnob.com/zh-hant/post/6815701730351253173751/
‘Just a great moment’: Damar Hamlin attends Bills’ playoff game three weeks after cardiac arrest (msn.com)
Damar Hamlin: A heart doctor answers 4 key questions about the NFL player’s injury.
Source: Damar Hamlin’s recovery weaved bond between rival Bills, Bengals (nypost.com)
The Eerie Damar Hamlin Interview That Keeps Resurfacing.
Damar Hamlin Collapses and Suffers Cardiac Arrest
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