There was a tragedy on the football field in a game against the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. After a relatively hard hit a Safety for the Bills stood up and then collapsed on the field. It was a scary sight for everyone in the stadium and for everyone watching on National TV. Turns out that the player had gone into cardiac arrest right there on the field in front of a national audience. They worked on him right away on the field for about 8 minutes and then transported him to the hospital in critical condition. It was reported that when he was transported to the hospital they had gotten his heart restarted but he was still was not breathing on his own. This is a tragedy that makes the game of football not seem quit as important.

This strikes home for me. Six years ago I went into cardiac arrest and my wife had to perform CPR on me until the First Responders showed up. I am so lucky that my wife was trained in CPR and had the cool to remember her training. It took over 6 minutes for the EMTs to get to me. They did get my heart started again but then it stopped again in the ambulance and they had to restart it. Just like Damar Hamlin I was kept sedated while they evaluated my heart and brain functions. When your heart stops sending blood to your brain there is a chance of brain damage so they are very conscious and keep you sedated while they evaluate your condition. It will take 24 hours or more before they update his condition. I had my heart attack on a Sunday and they did not take me out of the induced comma until Tuesday. Watching the reports of the player’s reaction was what I would have expected for what they just experience. Their teammate and friend was basically dead right there on the football field. Even though they did get his heart started does not mean that he is out of the woods but there is hope. He may belong to a very small group of people that have died and been brought back to life.

I saw a headline that right when the game was postponed that a certain shock sports writer Skip Bayless was upset that the game was being postponed because there were playoff implications on the line. A man was dead on the field and being resuscitated before the eyes of the world and he is worried about playoff implications. The game is not more important than a person’s life. The emotions that every player on the field had to have been feeling made impossible to play a game, any game. I am pretty sure that Skip Bayless was not alone in thinking that way. Too many people still have the attitude that these athletes are gladiators put there just for our entertainment. These guys are not just football players. They are teammates, friends, husbands, fathers and sons. There has to be some things that are just more important than football and this case, this is one of them. Too many times we have people that have been too willing to want athletes sacrifice their lives for their entertainment. That mentality should be gone from any civilized society but it hasn’t. Too many still want our gladiators in the ring putting their lives on the line just like the Romans.

After a situation like what happened Monday night  the football people, the conspiracy crackpots, will come out of the woodwork to future their insane political agenda. One of the postings I saw was that Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest because of the Covid vaccine. There is not a speck of evidence that the vaccine is the reason. Not a single medical person has even hinted that the vaccine could cause this but still the conspiracy crackpots come out to further their anti-vaccine cause. Yup, this is the free speech that Elon Musk thinks that should be protected. Hate speech that takes advantage of a terrifying accident to a young man that is fighting for his life. These hate groups try to steal the conversation to further their conspiracy theory about a vaccine that has saved millions of lies.

The people that where directly involved with what happened on the field will remember this for the rest of their lives. Damar Hamlin I am sure, just like me, will remember this for the rest of his life. My heart attack is in my thoughts every day. Every day I look at my wife and think what a lucky man I am to have married that wonderful woman. Saying thank you just doesn’t seem to be enough. I am pretty sure that Damar Hamlin and his entire family will feel the same thing.