Ram tough: How a football player got back up after losing consciousness on the field
Everything went dark
That's how Chris John Clark remembers the moment of impact
when he was hit by two defenders during a Cleveland
High School's football game last Friday
A physician tells me the type of heart attack that
Christian suffered is so rare it's unlikely it will ever
happen to another player here again
It happened in an instant
Uh I was on the left side of the hash
by the around the 40-50 yard line
Under the bright lights
I knew I was gonna have a big game
And then everything just went black
I still can't remember it to this day
Friday night
So I remember lining up in the formation we're going
down the score
And it was 7 to 10
Chris John Clark took a hard hit by defenders during
his football game
The impact to his chest caused a rare heart attack
known as camoso cortis
I ran down jumped over the fence ran out there
uh and when I got to him Coach Jones um
they had cut his jersey off and Coach Jones
Was doing compressions on him
Chris Clark remembers stepping in to help give his son
CPR while the school's athletic trainer grabbed a nearby AED
We were just asking the Lord to intervene as well
because when you don't have an ambulance and some students
have not made it where the equipment the training the
trainers were not
The danger of not doing CPR is so high
Dr
Graham Snyder was working in the emergency room at Wakemad
Raleigh when Chris John was rushed in
If it weren't for the quick actions on the field
Snyder says Chris John wouldn't be here now to share
his story
And it's a Extraordinarily unlucky rare phenomenon where if a
person is hitting their chest just at the right millisecond
it can start an electrical storm in the heart that
is very difficult to fix without um shocking them back
to life
You you hope something like this doesn't happen
um obviously we go through a lot of training
That moment of relief one head coach Scott Riley says
he'll never forget
Yeah
When he started breathing again um that was the the
biggest win of my career
And a moment the clerks say they will always be
thankful for
My hats off to the medical team to the coaching
staff to the athletic trainers um but also most importantly
you know we we just give God the glory and
and we thank him for um allowing us to have
another opportunity with our son
And some more good news came this Friday
for Chris John earlier he told me that he got
the results of his cardiac MRI
Those results looking good
Still to come for him on Monday is what's called
a stress test that's going to help doctors see just
how well his heart is performing and help determine when
he can get back on the field for good
Now he just says he's happy to have his jersey
back to be back out here with his teammates and
to hopefully continue their undefeated streak at Cleveland High School
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