Bills safety Damar Hamlin, after he gradually awoke from sedation in a hospital bed, put pen to paper with a question for the doctors treating him for a cardiac arrest.
“Did we win?”
“The answer is yes, Damar, you won. You’ve won the game of life,” Dr. Timothy Pritts, division chief of general surgery at University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said Thursday while recounting the story on a conference call for reporters.
Wednesday night into Thursday brought the miraculous “remarkable improvement” and “really good turning point” that the nation has wished for ever since Hamlin collapsed on the field Monday during a game against the Bengals.
Hamlin regained consciousness, communicated via writing while remaining intubated and showed signs that his neurological function is intact by following commands and demonstrating motor movement in both his hands and feet, though he remains in critical condition in intensive care, according to the doctors who held a nearly hour-long news conference.
“It’s not only that the lights are on,” Pritts said. “We know that he’s home. It appears all the cylinders are firing within his brain.”
Hope exists for Hamlin, 24, to make a full recovery. The next hurdles are continual lung improvement and breathing independent of a ventilator, which is preventing him from trying to speak. It is too soon to know if his NFL career eventually will continue, according to director of emergency medicine Dr. William Knight.
“The best [scenario] is getting him to the way he was at 8 o’clock on Monday evening,” said Knight, referencing the pre-kickoff time for the Bills-Bengals game. “Completely neurologically intact, strong, good lung function, no cardiac dysfunction with his heart. The best outcome would be back to who he was before this all happened.”
Hamlin tackled Bengals receiver Tee Higgins, rose to his feet, adjusted his facemask and fell onto his back. He had a pulse when first-responders rushed to his side, but he lost it within a minute, which prompted Bills assistant athletic trainer Danny Kellington to administer CPR that restarted Hamlin’s heartbeat. Bills head coach Sean McDermott called Kellington “a real hero in saving Damar’s life.”
It is “fair to say” the outcome could have been very different if not for the immediate life-saving measures before Hamlin was put into an ambulance, doctors said. Knight described it as a “long and difficult road for the last three days.” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said “the scene just replays over and over in your head.”
“Being on that field,” Allen said, fighting back tears during a separate news conference from team headquarters in Orchard Park, “you lose sleep. You hurt for your brother. A lot of shared grief. But getting positive updates eases so much of that pain and that tension that you feel.”
Hamlin is able to hold hands with visitors, which have included family, Bills GM Brandon Beane and Colts safety Rodney Thomas, who drove two hours to be by his former high school teammate’s bedside.
“I know he’s a fighter,” Thomas told reporters, “and there’s no other thought in my mind other than him walking out under his own power.”
The cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest is still not definitively known, and “tests will be ongoing as he continues to progress,” Pritts said. Independent doctors have suggested that Hamlin might have suffered commotio cordis, which can occur when the heart absorbs a physical impact at the most vulnerable time (a period of maybe 5-10 milliseconds) during the minute-long cardiac cycle, or that the back-and-forth ping-ponging of his head might have caused a rush of adrenaline that sent his heart into ventricular fibrillation.
“We’ve discussed with him what happened,” Pritts said. “He expressed surprise that he hasn’t been with the world for two days, and we talked to him about all the support that’s been shown for him.”
Mario Hamlin, Damar’s father, provided some of the updates to the Bills during a call Wednesday in which he relayed that his son would want the team to carry on practicing and play Sunday against the Patriots. Mario also thanked the support of his son’s charitable toy drive — which has raised $7.4 million this week — and asked that further donations be made to the hospital to support first-responders or to his son’s Chasing M’s Foundation.
The NFL announced Thursday night that the suspended Bills-Bengals game will not be resumed. The league also announced a plan to deal with AFC playoff seeding.
“Obviously we’ll be playing with less-heavy hearts now,” Allen said. “Today’s news brought us tears of joy. But to know that that’s what he wants, that’s what his dad wants, I think guys are excited to get out there.”
Doctors suggested sports teams across the country look at the care provided by the Bills’ and Bengals’ training and medical staffs as the “textbook case” for life-saving measures and resuscitation after cardiac arrest.
“The reason why we’re talking about his recovery of neurologic function,” Knight said, “is the true critical importance of immediate and good and high-quality CPR and immediate access to the defibrillation.”
