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Nwankwo Discusses Collapse, Recovery 3/22/2006
By TERESA M. WALKER NASHVILLE — Davis Nwankwo had just finished the second play in the fourth drill in Vanderbilt’s practice March 6, but he remembers nothing else until he woke up with an oxygen mask over his face. The redshirt freshman has no memory of the team trainer trying to breathe oxygen into his body. Nothing of the shock from the automatic external defibrillator that restarted his heart. The 19-year-old has since learned that Loyola Marymount’s Hank Gathers died of the same enlarged heart, a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He knows he’s lucky he collapsed during practice with a team trainer and a defibrillator nearby. “If I wasn’t here, if it didn’t happen here, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Nwankwo said Tuesday. The 6-foot-10 forward spoke with reporters for the first time since he collapsed in practice for the Southeastern Conference tournament. Sitting in a chair only a few feet away from where he fell, Nwankwo spoke very quietly even though he’s regained most of the 15 pounds he lost in the days after the collapse. “They told me I was walking gingerly off the court, then I just stumbled and collapsed. I went head first on the court. Then I woke up with a big oxygen mask on my face, and I was pretty scared. Lots of other people were around me,” Nwankwo said. That included Mike Meyer, the trainer for the men’s basketball team, and coach Kevin Stallings. “They had to calm me down with the help of Mike and Coach Stallings. They told me to breathe, and then after I started breathing normally, I was rushed to the hospital immediately,” he said. One benefit of playing at Vanderbilt is the closeness to the university’s medical center and emergency room. Doctors diagnosed the enlarged heart and delivered the news that he won’t be able to play basketball again, not even in a pickup game. He feels grateful. “Obviously, I think God has something special for me. I’m just looking at it like that,” he said. Gathers collapsed on March 4, 1990, during a game and died a couple hours later even though doctors were on hand. An autopsy indicated that Atlanta Hawks center Jason Collier died last fall of cardiomyopathy, which causes cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death. Danny Rumph of Western Kentucky died of the condition last May during a pickup game. Vanderbilt has three automatic external defibrillators in the school’s sports medicine department, and Meyer sent a student trainer to fetch one from the training room once he saw Nwankwo on the court. “I turned around to pick something up off the floor. I heard someone hit the ground. My first thought was, ‘Who fell? The play’s over. I’m thinking it’s an ankle. Someone got pushed. When I turned around and saw him laying the way he was laying there, I knew it was a lot more serious than an ankle or an orthopedic injury,” Meyer said. “A lot of good things happened for us that day.” Nwankwo holds out hope that the future might bring new technology that would allow him to play basketball again. Before he collapsed, he had played in 23 games, scoring 12 points and grabbing 30 points off the bench. He’s back in class, with everyone he meets offering to help him or do something for him. He hasn’t settled on a major but is focusing on his studies. He also talks daily with his parents, who remind him he is loved. And if his heart stops again, he’s not worried. “I feel confident that the thing they put in my chest is going to save me again,” he said.
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