Young people have been mysteriously dying “suddenly” for a couple of years now. While medical science can’t, or won’t pin down a cause, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening with alarming regularity.
Seemingly fit, viable people have literally been dropping dead. The strange case of Buffalo Bill Damar Hamlin and his subsequent miracle recovery has offered some hope that sudden cardiac arrest isn’t an automatic death sentence.
Sadly, most people don’t have the world class medical facilities that the NFL and the University of Cincinnati have, so way more often than not tragedy ensues. Recently, Sammy Berko, a teenage boy from Missouri City, Texas, went to a rock climbing gym where he suffered cardiac arrest and died. Two hours later he was alive. Miracle?
In an interview with Fox News, his mother Jennifer Berko had this to say: “He climbed to the top of the wall, rang the bell, as we were told, and then his body went limp, and it looked like he was either playing around or passed out. They weren’t quite sure and when they realized he was unresponsive, they lowered him slowly,”
This scenario is every parent’s worst nightmare. Paramedics worked on the seemingly fit and healthy teen for two hours before calling it. His mother recalls the moments when she thought he was gone, then miraculously came back: “I started talking to him, just telling him how much I love him and sorry that we didn’t know how to save him. Suddenly, as I started praying, my husband said, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s moving,'”
The grieving couple summoned the paramedics back in, and they continued working on him until he got to the intensive care unit. Considering how long the young man was down, catastrophic brain trauma was considered almost inevitable. However, miraculously that turned out not to be the case.
Texas teen dies rock climbing, two hours later he revives: 'A literal miracle' https://t.co/PLNeJKzh2H
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 17, 2023
From his hospital bed, Sammy Berko recounted what he could remember of the events: “I don’t remember anything about the day it happened. The last thing I remember is the night before we had to sign waivers online (for the rock climbing gym), and then I woke up, not even in the pediatric ICU,” Sammy told Fox 26. “I woke up in the transitional ICU and that’s the first thing I remember. Then I remember my dad telling me, this is what happened and you better remember this time, because he said it so many times.”
The teen escaped with his life, and his mental acuity intact, but that doesn’t mean it has been smooth sailing. His body underwent a lot of trauma, and his recovery will be long. Dr. Stacey Hall, Medical Director of the Pediatric Rehabilitation talked about the case: “I was very struck by his story. It’s very gripping and very unusual. That only young man you know, who had this Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT), which is a super rare genetic disorder that affects his heart. We do see kids all the time here who have had CPR, but with very prolonged CPR, we typically see very severe global anoxic brain injury, so to me, he is a literal miracle.”
A miracle indeed. The boys parents ultimately learned that he has the same condition that killed his older brother three years earlier. Now Sammy and his mother are undergoing tests and taking medication to address the condition moving forward.
Sammy summed up what he is experiencing as he learns to navigate a wheelchair while he re-learns how to walk: “I knew it would be a weird, crazy experience learning to walk again and working on strength without using my legs to be able to balance me. It has just been an amazing experience here actually, like I’ve noticed that I’m better every day! I’m doing something new every single day,”
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