Hamlin wants to raise awareness of this rare cardiac condition
Damar Hamlin, 25, is recovering from a heart attack in his home state: “She’s going to die, he’s back at work”
Who is he? Damar Hamlin is a 25-year-old NFL safety for the Buffalo Bills, and made headlines earlier this year for collapsing on the field during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2nd.
Hamlin had a heart problem in the away game against Cincinnati on January 2. He received CPR on the fields within minutes, which experts credit with drastically improving his odds of survival.
He spent nearly a week being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where doctors said he was on a “very normal” or even “accelerated trajectory” in his recovery. After a few more days of evaluation and testing at the hospital in Buffalo, doctors decided he could “continue his rehabilitation at home and with the Bills.”
“They’re all in lockstep of what this was and that he’s clear to resume full activity,” he added. He was just like anyone else coming back from an injury.
What did Hamlin do before he lost his life? A tribute to the late-time Olympian and a friend of his mentor
He was the winner of the Alan Page Community Award, an award that rewards players who perform community service above and beyond their team city or hometown. Almost all of the $9 million raised for Hamlin’s charity was in the wake of his injury.
Hamlin and President Biden met in Washington, D.C. late last month and the president praised his “courage, resilience and spirit.” In a video shared to Twitter, the president can be seen asking the athlete whether he’s going to be able to play again.
My heart is still in it. I love the game and my heart is still in it. I want to prove to myself that I am not the only one. I just want to show people that fear is a choice. You can keep going even though you don’t know what’s happening at the end of the tunnel. Or you might feel anxious, you might feel any type of way, but you keep putting that right foot in front of the left one and you keep going. I’d like to stand for that.
Every day is the wild moment, when you wake up and take deep breaths, and live a peaceful life. To have a family, to have people around me that love me, and for those people to still have me in their lives. They almost lost me. In front of a worldwide audience, I died. From all perspectives I can see it. For them to still have me around, and for me to still have them, it goes both ways. And I lost a bunch of people in my life, and I know a bunch of people who have lost people in their lives, and I know that feeling. The biggest blessing of it all is that. For me to have my people, and for my people to have me.
