‘Did We Win?’: Damar Hamlin Communicating In Long Road To Recovery

By Barry Janoff

UPDATED January 6, 2023: NFL Network reported today that Damar Hamlin has delivered a message to the Buffalo Bills and spent Friday morning speaking to various teammates on FaceTime, with his breathing tube now removed.

January 5, 2023: Two of the doctors treating Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin following his cardiac arrest during Monday Night Football said today he is showing good signs of recovery and has started to communicate via pen and paper.

“His first question that he wrote when he started to awaken was, ’Did we win?’” regarding the game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Dr. Timothy Pritts said during a televised media conference from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center today, where Hamlin has been in intensive care since Monday night.

"The answer is yes, Damar, you won. You’ve won the game of life.”

Unable to speak, with a breathing tube in his throat, the doctors said Hamlin has been writing to communicate with medical staff and family and holding hands with “relatives, members of the Bills’ administrative and medical teams at his bedside.”

“So we know that it’s not only that the lights are on, we know that he’s home,” said Pritts. “And it appears that all the cylinders are firing within his brain, which is greatly gratifying for all of us.

“He still has significant progress he needs to make, but this marks a really good turning point in his ongoing care.”

“He still has significant progress he needs to make, but this marks a really good turning point in his ongoing care.”

“It’s been a long and difficult road for the last three days . . . he has made a pretty remarkable improvement,” Dr. William Knight IV said during the media conference. “Workup is ongoing" to determine the specific cause or causes that led to Hamlin's cardiac arrest.

"When we talk about neurologically intact, it's a very gross term of big motor movements and following commands," said Knight. “When we talk about the finer things that make us human — cognition, emotion, speech, language, etc. — we're looking forward to learning more about that soon.

“He has a little ways to go in terms of liberation from the ventilator.”

"He's not quite at the point where we can have a conversation because, again, he still has a breathing tube in and is able to communicate (no) by shaking his head, nodding his head (yes) or with brief notes," said Pritts.

“He expressed surprise that he had been not with the world for two days, and we talked to him about all the support that has been given from Cincinnati, Buffalo and really across the country for him and his family during this time."

According to Knight, “The fact that he had highly trained professionals from the Buffalo Bills in addition to having paramedics, emergency physicians, respiratory therapists, all right at his bedside in less than a minute from the collapse — that speaks to that ability that demonstrates that he had good perfusion to his brain that led to no identifiable neurologic deficit.”

According to AP Sports, “The NFL will not resume the Bills-Bengals game that was suspended Monday night . . . The NFL Players Association must approve changes.”

Even with that, the focus still remains on Hamlin’s recovery.

“We had significant concern about him after the injury, but he is making substantial progress," Pritts said. “As of (this) morning, he is beginning to awaken, and it appears that his neurologic function is intact.

“There are many, many steps still ahead of him. From our standpoint, we would like to see him continue to improve, to be completely breathing on his own and to be ready to be discharged from the hospital.”

Hamlin's The Chasing M’s Foundation Community Toy Drive: More than $7.5 million raised to date.

(This story will be updated on a regular basis.)

Damar Hamlin Heath, Future Focus Of Family, Friends, Fans, NFL Fraternity

Back to Home Page