I hesitated writing this column out of fear it may jinx his chances. But since a dead man spoke Saturday, it’s okay for me to. And even if, fates forbid, Damar Hamlin’s condition were to worsen, the unbelievable should still be noted.
And believed. Because Monday night was nothing short of miraculous — if science didn’t do it so on the regular.
Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, took a helmet to the chest that was so precise — a YouTubing cardiologist called it the kind of blow “you only see in medical textbooks” — that Hamlin had a cardiac arrest on field.
My brethren in the news media have done a poor job of explaining cardiac arrest, so let me attempt one.
Hamlin dropped dead. For 13 seconds, an NFL player was dead in midfield Cincinnati. And science, in the form of Bills assistant coach Denny Kellington, manually pumped blood through that dead man. Not unconscious; not woozy; not paralyzed. Dead. That’s why the players were weeping. They’d never seen a man killed. Few have.
Seconds after that, more science, this time in the form of a defibrillator that re-triggered his heart.
At the University of Cincinnati, neurologists said Hamlin’s early brain function may be fully intact.
The New York Times obtained audio of the Bills medical crew the moment Hamlin died. A supervisor ordered a gurney immediately after seeing the collision because he didn’t “like how he went down.”
And today, Hamlin is tweeting: “When you put real love out into the world it comes back to you 3x’s as much,” he wrote in his first Instagram post since his collapse Monday. “The Love has been overwhelming, but I’m thankful for every single person that prayed for me and reached out. If you know me you know this only gone make me stronger. On a long road keep praying for me!”
Indeed, the nation surely will. The Bills — a team that once went to four straight Super Bows but has never won one — is my new favorite this playoffs.
But, should this long road bring Hamlin back to the sidelines, in any capacity, I hope Kellington and the UofC crew are equally hailed.
After all, it’s not often you see a resurrection.
