Dr. Brandon Erickson, Sports Orthopaedic Surgeon

No one's more locked into the NFL than First and Pod. Why is it not within the realm of possibility that Geno Smith was a victim of a horrible organization, bad offensive coaching, and then went and played behind three high-level talents and only got spot starts and did okay by the way?

Well because it's just it doesn't really happen that often anymore. Subscribe to First and Pod on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. What's the strangest thing you're afraid of? Tails without fur on them, such as rats or opossums. I'm Larry Mullins, host of the podcast Your Weirdest Fears, where we dig into the crazy things you're afraid of. Everything from animal people hybrids, you know people who get surgeries to look like an animal, to giant statues.

If I ever saw one of those giant statues, I probably would poop my pants. Listen and subscribe on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast from. Doc, I do appreciate the time. Thank you for carving out a few minutes for us.

No problem at all. What an unfortunate and crazy couple of days it's been. It has and I'm surprised and obviously it's awesome news what we got today, but just your medical opinion on this, it's remarkable that we have encouraging reports now on this Thursday. It is and you know if you think about what happened a couple of days ago on Monday night, obviously we saw them go down.

We assume it wasn't a rhythm. You have a tarp meeting, something happened that the tarp stopped beating or beaten in a kind of a funny way and so when that happens kind of in the field or not in the hospital setting, immediately guys start CPR. They put that electrical defibrillator device on. People you know have seen these things called AEDs all around and those are basically little defibrillators that actually are very useful and can help a lot in these situations and so they were able to kind of get his heart back into a regular rhythm on the field.

They had to get it back again when they got to the hospital and they intentionally then cooled him down and put him under sedation and intubated him because what they want to do is when you have an injury like that where you're not pumping blood to all your vital organs, what you want to do is cool the organs down so they have a much lower need for oxygen so there's no death that happens in the tissues and then you slowly rewarm them. So today is about the right day that we should have started hearing news. It's really encouraging what we've heard so far. So we also hear that he's still critically ill but he appears to be neurologically intact.

Can you just tell us exactly what that means as we just keep on hearing that this is awesome news today? Yeah so the critically ill thing, he's certainly in the intensive care unit and when you have to be intubated and you have to be sedated you know there's other side effects that can happen from that and so he hasn't completely come out of the woods yet. He's still intubated so he's not breathing on his own. So what they'll do over the next couple of days is they'll start to run these breathing trials on him and see if he can start breathing on his own. One meaning his heart and lungs are working okay and two that he's awake and alert enough to know that he's supposed to breathe on his own.

Now breathing is something that we just do naturally but if you have a traumatic injury sometimes that natural rhythm can get messed up a little bit. So you have to make sure that he can do that on his own and then when he finally does get extubated or meaning the tube gets taken out of his throat and he's awake then they're going to have to run a whole battery of tests on him. So they you know they said today he was nerve asking intact which is which is excellent and by that they mean that his kind of gross motor skills are intact. So he could respond to commands, he was moving his hands and feet and things like that but we have to make sure that when he does wake up that all the other stuff is okay too. So his ability to write, his ability to talk normally.

So those are things that we'll find out about over the next couple of days. I know the doctor said today that he was able to write and ask through writing who won the game. Like to me when I heard that today that almost didn't even seem real.

It's stunning to me doc. It is and it's pretty impressive that he was one that tells us a ton of things about him. One that he was alert enough to do that. Two that he remembered where he was that day so he didn't have any type of amnesia. Three that he was processing things in his brain enough to know that one he's a football player. Two he played in a game. Three he had an injury and four there may have been a game that happened after him. So the amount that goes into such a simple question like that is actually tremendous from from a recovery perspective for him.

So I'll be interested to hear what he what he says after they tell him that the game wasn't played. Yeah right Dr. Brandon Harrison here with us. Denny Kellington who's a part of the the Bills staff he was the one that was giving CPR on the field to DeMar Hamlin.

Clearly he's been someone that has been talked about a lot today as he should and a lot of Bills players are posting about him. The immediate response doc it's it's you know I know that in the moment it's all about how people respond but the immediate response really did save his life. You're exactly right so the immediate response was what made him not only save his life but hopefully will lead him to be a relatively functional and hopefully essentially back to you know quote normal as he can be. So whenever you have a traumatic injury like he did where the heart stops and you're not getting oxygen to places the faster you can get somebody CPR the more likely it is that they will get good oxygen flow to their brain and so you know we think about CPR this would be my quick two second speech on CPR. If anybody ever sees anybody go down and they don't have a pulse don't worry about giving them breaths in their mouth just give them CPR on their chest. Get about 100 beats a minute do it to that stay in the live song that we all hear about and try to pump their butt as best you can because there's a lot of reserves from oxygen in the blood so if you really do good CPR very quickly you can actually save somebody's life like we saw happen on the field so it's really impressive. Obviously Dr. Brandon Erickson our main focus is on the recovery of Damar Hamlin but there's a lot of people that saw some horrible things on Monday. The mental side of this just how do you kind of think people get help is it just simply by by talking to people from from what they saw unfortunately occur the other night? It is and especially you know certainly there were a lot of kids watching this certainly you know football game a lot of implications from a fantasy football and betting perspective so a lot of eyes on this game and obviously very unfortunate when it happened. I thought the players did a great job of kind of you know circling around him so that you know there weren't a lot of people who are constantly watching this but you're exactly right anytime you see a traumatic injury anytime there's a trauma that happens the first step is to understand that one you did see a traumatic thing and so if this is something that's new to you if you're not comfortable with this if you haven't seen this certainly good if you're you know if you're a younger person talk to your parents they're a great resource if you're an older person or you know if you don't have access to things like that certainly calling you know helplines there's a lot of different helplines that you can call if you're confused about what you saw if you just need somebody to listen to certainly any type of primary care doctor and even an orthopedic surgeon like me I'm always happy to talk to patients like this because you really want to make sure that one you process what happened two you understand why it happened and three you know you put yourself in a situation where you feel comfortable going forward doc you played football at notre dame what do you think we're going to see on the field sunday i know the bills did talk today that damar's father did address them and they're going to go play and that's what damar hamlin wanted to do and and and would and will want them to do just i can't even imagine what those players are going through and you know that the power of a locker room how it could bring a lot of people together it is and my hope is that they rally around him and rally around the fact that he's doing well i think that was hugely important for the team's psyche because you know we each have our own individual psyche but you hear a lot of times people talk about the psyche of the team and that's the most powerful thing especially in football and so the fact that he's doing well and the team knows that his main focus is to continue what they started at the beginning of the season um is really powerful for them because it's very hard to go out when you know that one of your brothers got hurt especially hurt in a way like this you know guys have you know broken bones and acl tears and we know that they're going to be okay from those things and it's not going to affect their you know life as a human after football but when you see something like this we know that there can be some long-term implications of things that may happen down the road and so it's just it's really important that he's making the improvements that he has and just so everybody knows these are very very fast and kind of speedy dramatic improvements that he's making so hopefully the team can take some and kind of take some style with it and be pretty pretty happy with that and they can do the old you know win one for the giver if you will what else do you want people to know um about this situation dr brandon erickson just with your medical background yeah no zack it's a good question i think you know one of the things that people should take away from this is that one working quickly and working as a team can have really great results and in this situation everybody did what they were supposed to do and didn't hesitate and that's probably what's going to have saved this young man's life so understanding how much one person can do and how effective people can be is very important too if you see something like this happen and you're in a situation where you don't have access to medical professionals or aeds or things like that simple cpr can be very effective and then three the that aed thing i told you about before that defibrillator um we those are actually in schools and in movie theaters and airports and they're pretty much all over the place now they're usually in a little glass box and they're in a little kind of pouch and what they are is it's a little device with two little pads on it there's pictures on it on how to use it i'd encourage everybody to just go online and just look at what that is and see how you put it on somebody and how you use it it'll take you about two minutes to see that and that way in case you ever faced in the situation where you're walking by and something happens to somebody and you see one you know how to use it because you're as good as any doctor in the field if you can do that before we let dr brandon erickson run uh just to quickly transition to two uh questions not related to the buffalo bills and damar hamlin and what occurred lamar jackson he has not practiced again he has this pcl injury uh it's now going to be 32 days since the the knee injury a lot of people wonder how much is this contract related from the medical side is 32 days a pretty long time here to not be able to get back get back out there on the practice field yeah i would tell you know pcl injuries are a little bit tough so when you know guys have acl injuries boom it's surgery your after the season we know that pcl injury is kind of similar to what zack wilson had a couple years ago or last year excuse me um they are injuries that generally heal okay on their own but the knee never heals to be the same as it was before the injury so we see guys that come back from acl tears we fix their acl they do very well a pcl when you have a pcl injury it generally gets stretched out but doesn't completely rupture and it scores in a little bit over time but it always leaves just a little bit of leftover kind of looseness or laxity to that knee and to get somebody used to doing that who relies on his ability to scramble and cut and pivot and make guys miss to be successful it's not that unheard of for him to have missed you know the last month or so you know we we chat a little bit on the sunday show that you know i was kind of surprised they didn't put them on injured reserve because we have this idea of how fast we can get guys back but the reality is you know injuries like that take time and so i don't think it's unreasonable for him to be out especially with you know especially with the situation that the ravens are in as far as the playoffs are concerned and before we let you run uh jaylen hurts with the shoulder injury uh we're expecting him to make his return this week and we'll see how the eagles are going to handle this is there a concern if you're an eagles fan just because he's been out the last few weeks or was it more so they thought they were going to clinch they know they they they have not yet but uh maybe they were just uh being a little extra cautious the last week or two no i think he was probably the right move regardless of where they were at in the season to hold him out for the last two weeks you know those those sc or that cervicalicular injury that he had you know just a little bit more significant than those ac injuries that we see just because it involves everything that's very close to your breastplate or your sternum and that's not as common of a place to have an injury so i think it was the right move to hold him out now certainly it's very important for them to win this week but you may see and this is just me talking on the side but you know it'd be interesting to see if they do start him or not this week because with the giants potentially playing some backups and the eagles just need to win i wouldn't be surprised if maybe they didn't start with him but he was there in case they needed him in the second half we appreciate the time dr brandon erickson thank you so much zack i will talk to you on sunday brother have a nice night the listening you love is on the free odyssey app your trusted local radio stations coverage of your favorite teams live news from your hometown and millions of podcasts on demand best of all you can completely customize your listening experience follow topics you care about like leagues and teams pause or rewind your local sports and news and add shows to your queue to catch up later there's a lot to listen to so get started and download the free odyssey app today no one's more locked into the nfl than first and pod why is it not within the realm of possibility that geno smith was a victim of a horrible organization bad offensive coaching and then went and played behind three high level talents and only got spot starts and did okay by the way well because it's just it doesn't really happen that often anymore subscribe to first and pod on the odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast what's the strangest thing you're afraid of tails without fur on them such as rats or opossums i'm larry mullins host of the podcast your weirdest fears where we dig into the crazy things you're afraid of everything from animal people hybrids you know people who get surgeries to look like an animal to giant statues if i ever saw one of those giant statues i probably would poop my pants listen and subscribe on the odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast from