Foobaw and more

Let me start with Damar Hamlin. His physicians haven ' t said anything publicly about what happened to him, but there are basically two possibilities. First, it is obviously uncommon but not unheard of for apparently healthy athletes to suffer cardiac arrest during exertion. This happened to Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis. I happened to be in Boston Garden watching the first round playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets on April 29, 1993 when Lewis collapsed. All of the spectators were baffled about what  had happened.  Doctors at New England Baptist Hospital later diagnosed him with a heart abnormality called focal cardiomyopathy, and advised him not to play basketball any more. He got a second opinion from cardiologist Gilbert " Punky " Mudge at Brigham and Women ' s Hospital. Punky told him that essentially, he had just fainted. (I call him Punky because I did in fact make his acquaintance on two occasions regarding and unrelated matter, when I was working as a consultant.) Lewis then went to shoot hoops at the Celtic ' s practice facility at Brandeis, where as it happens I was a graduate student, and he dropped dead. He had not had a Covid-19 vaccine.The other possibility is called commotio cordis. This is just really bad luck. A blow to the chest, timed precisely to a point in the heartbeat cycle, can send the heart into ventricular fibrillation, a disorganized beat that doesn ' t pump blood. This is actually more common in baseball than it is in foot...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs