January 4, 2023 – You spend countless hours together within the locker room and on the sphere, arguing and bickering – after which making up, like siblings do. You give back to the community and provides your all to a game you all love very much. Losing your teammate or player to a potentially career-ending – or fatal – injury may be difficult.
Some athletes compare the sensation to the lack of a fighting comrade or a distant member of the family.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin continues to be in critical condition after Game on Monday against the Cincinnati Bengals. Hamlin attacked a Bengals receiver, stood up and immediately fell backwards to the bottom as he suddenly Cardiac arrest.
Many consider that Hamlin has an emotion of the centerwherein a blow to the chest causes cardiac arrest.
Players on either side of the stadium stared in disbelief, buried their hands of their faces and fell to the bottom as medical personnel rushed onto the sphere and tried to revive Hamlin's heartbeat. He received respiratory assistance via Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and a AED device – or a defibrillator – for about 10 minutes before being taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He continues to be sedated.
Empathy—each toward one's teammate and toward that teammate's family—is maybe certainly one of the strongest feelings an event like this will evoke within the teammates of an injured player, especially because they know exactly what it means to compete at such a high level. National Hockey League Hall of Fame member and two-time Olympic gold medalist Chris Pronger knows this all too well.
During a 1998 playoff game in Detroit, Pronger, a former captain of the St. Louis Blues, was struck in the center by a hockey puck and suffered a cardiac arrest on account of a commotio cordis. The puck hit him between heartbeats, causing his heart to register that it had “skipped a beat,” he says.
“It's crazy to think that so much oxygen is pumped through the body in a single heartbeat,” Pronger recalls in an exclusive interview with WebMD. “The lack of oxygen rendered me unconscious.”
Fortunately, Pronger didn't demand Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and was allowed to proceed playing after tests were done to ensure his heart was strong enough to play on the rink. But he still vividly remembers how much his injury affected those around him.
“You can somehow see [in the video clip of the accident] I'm a little off track, I stumble a little bit and then I fall to the ground. The next thing I know, I wake up and I'm staring up at the rafters, at the former players' jersey numbers and the banners. I look over and see players on the bench crying.”
Such situations can be very difficult for teammates to deal with and many don't know how to react. That's why it was a good idea for the NFL to postpone the game after Hamlin's goal in the first quarter, says Pronger.
“Some people don't really know how to comprehend what they just saw and what happened right in front of their eyes,” he says. “You see players break an arm or a leg, or you see a guy concussion and dejected, but there is never any doubt that they will survive.”
The question of how best to proceed after such an injury can be difficult, according to Pronger, especially because commotio cordis is so rare.
“I think it's going to leave a lot of scars everywhere – on the people in the game, the coaching staff, the medical staff and the fans, especially because they don't know how he's doing and how this is going to turn out,” he says.
Hoping that Hamlin will recover successfully, Pronger addresses a few words to the Bills safety.
“Quality of life is the most important thing,” he says. “Playing sports and being active is secondary.”
The emotional strain on Hamlin's teammates and coaches is currently a cause for concern, says Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of preventive cardiology and girls's cardiovascular health at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center.
“We wish to ensure that the players who were on the sphere at the moment get the suitable mental health support, and every other player within the NFL would definitely seek counseling as well – that's their job,” she says.
People can react differently to such life-changing events – so while one person may need professional help, another may just need a listening ear or a shoulder to lean on. It's also important that NFL medical staff seek emotional support when needed, as this type of injury is rare in the sport, she says.
“You will have to deal with that too, right? We [doctors] are all trained in the hospital to treat patients, and if something happens, you know they were already sick. But this was a guy who was just playing football – and was healthy, right? It's a very different story for the medical staff on the field,” says Mehta.