On Monday night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, #3, collapsed on the field during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Most of us have seen the terrifying picture of Bills and Bengals players kneeling in a circle around him, shielding Hamlin from view as the NFL’s medical team performed CPR on him.
On arrival at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Hamlin had to be resuscitated yet again. (When I heard that, I feared the worst.)
The doctors sedated Hamlin and placed him on a ventilator.
By Wednesday, we were starting to hear positive reports of his improvement.
When he awoke on Thursday, he was still on a breathing tube but able to write on a clipboard, “Did we win?”
The response: Damar, you won. You won the game of life.
A doctor reported that “not only are the lights on, he’s home.”
The world started letting out the breath it had been holding.
By Thursday evening, Hamlin was breathing on his own, and on Friday morning, the Buffalo Bills released the welcome news: He’d talked to his teammates via video. When he came up on screen, the team stood up and clapped for him. Bills player Dion Dawkins said afterwards, “We got our boy, man! That’s all that matters.”
Hamlin told them, “Love you guys,” and made what is a signature gesture for him, both hands coming together and forming a heart.
Today, he posted on Instagram.
He thanked everyone for their support, for their love, and asked for prayers for the long road ahead.
For someone who’d had to be revived twice at the beginning of the week, it’s a remarkable recovery.
On Sunday, the team will take the field - without Hamlin - against the New England Patriots. I’m wondering what they will be thinking. The good news about Damar Hamlin may be the shot of adrenaline the team needs to beat the Patriots. Or, it’s possible that the mental roller coaster they’ve been on may have taken a negative toll.
Commentators and journalists have talked about the effect of Hamlin’s injury: first, that “life is more important than football,” how traumatizing it was for players to see his collapse, the fear that he might not make it . . . and now, the relief that we feel since he’s awake and able to communicate.
A toy drive he’d started, with a goal of $2500, has received around $8 million.
Players, fans, and others associated with the NFL are posting “Love for Damar” with the number 3. Some teams have outlined the number 3 on the 30-yard line in the Bills’ team colors of red and blue.
But even though so much of the news sounds positive, Damar Hamlin is still in critical condition. And while I was checking the Internet for this post, I found in a CNN article that Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest, which is caused by electrical disturbances that cause the heart to stop beating properly. What Hamlin suffered was not a heart attack or heart failure. I had not known there was a difference between “heart attack” and “cardiac arrest”. Thank God the medical personnel got to Hamlin in time. Now the doctors want to know what caused that cardiac arrest.
Damar Hamlin is not totally out of the woods yet. He has, as he himself says, a long road ahead.
But now, the world can finally let out the breath it’s been holding all week.
#lovefordamar
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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