Football Player, 13, Returns Home from Hospital After Suffering Heart Attack on Field
A Southern California youth football player is back home after a heart attack that put him in a hospital for an entire month.
Cash Hennessy, 13, was released last week, according to KABC-TV in Los Angeles.
He doesn’t remember the traumatic event, according to KABC.
The last thing he can recall is the night before the fateful football game in San Bernardino County’s Rancho Cucamonga.
Hennessy was on the sidelines when he began to have trouble breathing during the Sept. 17 contest, KABC-TV reported Sept. 23.
When he collapsed, on-scene medics provided CPR.
The boy ultimately had to be taken to Children’s Hospital Orange County, where doctors made a concerning discovery.
Cash had been born with a congenital heart condition. The youth had to undergo open heart surgery before being placed on a ventilator, according to KABC.
The boy’s parents refused to leave the hospital without their son.
“We had kind of made a promise to him that we weren’t leaving until he did, and for us as parents, that’s really what got us through, was all the support and all the prayers and all the well wishes and the messages,” Cash’s father Chad told KABC last week.
Cash is now recovering at home.
The Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson recorded a video expressing his support for the youth, KABC reported in September.
“You have so much greatness ahead of you. Just keep your faith, keep your head high, keep saying your prayers and just lean on your family during this time,” the NBA star told Cash.
Part of Cash’s treatment included extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, in which blood is removed from the patient, filtered for carbon dioxide, then returned to the body rich in oxygen. That gives damaged hearts and lungs a chance to rest and heal.
The boy ultimately made a quicker recovery than expected, according to KABC.
“When he started walking, after three days from being on an ECMO machine for close to eight days, there were nurses crying in the hallways,” said Brenda Hennessy, Cash’s mother.
The Hennessys plan to advocate for health screening in youth sports as well as CPR-trained personnel on the scene at youth games, according to KABC.
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