Inside the Hospital Where Damar Hamlin’s Life Was Saved

But on Jan. 4, they said in a news conference at the hospital, Mr. Hamlin had begun to improve. He was awake enough to communicate by nodding and shaking his head. To the medical staff’s delight, he even wrote, “did we win?” on a pad provided by a bedside nurse.

Finally, a week after his cardiac arrest, hospital staff secreted him out of the medical center to fly back to Buffalo. Dr. Knight accompanied him to the Cincinnati airport.

It still is not known why Mr. Hamlin had a cardiac arrest. A likely explanation was a rare event, commotio cordis, in which a blow to the chest — in his case, from a tackle — at exactly the right 20-millisecond interval in the heart’s cycle can make the heart stop. But Mr. Hamlin’s doctors still need to eliminate other possible causes for his injury, like a heart defect. Sometimes, they never find a cause.

The staff at the medical center insists that all patients are treated the same — from the 30 percent who are uninsured to the wealthy donors to celebrities.

Of course, though, Mr. Hamlin was different.

“We’ve taken care of his illness before, but what do you do when you have to drive past 20 interview trucks?” asked Dr. Stewart Wright, the hospital’s chief medical officer.

Flowers and cards for Mr. Hamlin arrived by the truckload, and donated meals were constantly being delivered. Fans attached posters to a chain-link fence outside, flew balloons and held candlelight vigils.

There were so many callers that the medical center had to hire additional operators, but the hospital would not even confirm to callers that he was a patient.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/health/damar-hamlin-cardiac-arrest-hospital.html