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Touching ESPN Piece on TD

mav1234

By mav1234,
in Carolina Panthers

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mav1234 Grand Master

mav1234

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http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10176758/keep-carolina-panthers-thomas-davis-nfl-hot-read

 

It's worth the read.  Goddamn, TD is amazing.

 

 

Thanks for everything you did for me, he said. I'm done.

He called teammate Jon Beason, who was in bed recovering from his own surgery for an Achilles tendon tear. This is it, Davis said. No one's going to want me.

That night he talked it over with his wife, Kelly. This time he'd get a cadaver ligament to replace his ACL. It wasn't flexible enough for pro football, but maybe he could shoot hoops at the gym. The rehab wouldn't be as hard. He wouldn't have to train for the torque and thrust of life as an NFL linebacker. He'd stop when he was well enough to run around the backyard with his kids.

At first, he felt peace. No NFL player -- no pro athlete of any kind -- had come back from three ACL tears on the same knee. There was no point in thinking about it.

Then he thought about it.

He thought about all he had gone through that everyone knew about. He thought about the one thing almost nobody knew about.

The next morning, he showed up at Panthers practice. And he got ready to start over again.

 

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mav1234 Grand Master

mav1234

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so wow.  I just read through this and came on something interesting I didn't know:

 

 

In the 2009 preseason, he was doing charity work to make sure young athletes got screened for hidden heart conditions. Davis took a group of kids to a Charlotte hospital that had set up free ultrasounds and EKGs. To show it wasn't scary, he got the first screening himself.

Afterward, the doctors pulled him aside and said they needed to talk.

The coronary arteries ship blood away from the heart. In a normal heart, one originates on the left side of the heart, the other on the right. The screening showed that both of Davis' coronary arteries were on the same side. It's not an especially rare condition; maybe 1 in 200 people has it. It often doesn't cause any symptoms. But when doctors find it, they normally recommend correcting it. That means open-heart surgery. And for Davis, that might have meant the end of his career.

The Panthers pulled him out of practice. Davis went to the Emory Heart & Vascular Center in Atlanta for tests. The team sent his medical records to heart clinics around the country. Davis prayed. Eventually, the doctors' consensus was that Davis was in such good condition that he didn't need the surgery. He gets a stress test after every season to double-check.

 

 

Other awesome snippets that show how great TD is as a person:

 

 

Thomas is the second member of Davis' lonely club. Last year Thomas tore his right ACL for the third time, and this year he became the first player besides Davis to make it back from that into the NFL. Now they talk and text about exercise tips and staying motivated.

 

"I didn't know how I was going to get through it," Thomas says. "I just knew the trauma. TD helped me get past that and look at the future. My daughter never really got to see me play before this year, you know? Now she has. I can tell her these stories and tell her, 'You never give up.'"

 

 

 

But he didn't know if the Panthers would take him back at all. After the third tear, he met with Panthers owner Jerry Richardson and then-general manager Marty Hurney to ask for another chance. Panthers coach Ron Rivera -- a tough guy, a linebacker on the Bears' Super Bowl champs under Mike Ditka -- says he has gotten choked up twice as the Panthers' coach. Once was when a disabled veteran spoke to the team for Veterans Day. The other was when Davis said he wanted to play again.

 

I wish they'd touched on JR telling him he could come back... I remember hearing JR told him if his heart was in it he should keep playing

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tarheelpride Contributor

tarheelpride

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Reading through this article for myself. Never knew about his heart condition until now:

 

 

In the 2009 preseason, he was doing charity work to make sure young athletes got screened for hidden heart conditions. Davis took a group of kids to a Charlotte hospital that had set up free ultrasounds and EKGs. To show it wasn't scary, he got the first screening himself.

 

Afterward, the doctors pulled him aside and said they needed to talk.

The coronary arteries ship blood away from the heart. In a normal heart, one originates on the left side of the heart, the other on the right. The screening showed that both of Davis' coronary arteries were on the same side. It's not an especially rare condition; maybe 1 in 200 people has it. It often doesn't cause any symptoms. But when doctors find it, they normally recommend correcting it. That means open-heart surgery. And for Davis, that might have meant the end of his career.

 

The Panthers pulled him out of practice. Davis went to the Emory Heart & Vascular Center in Atlanta for tests. The team sent his medical records to heart clinics around the country. Davis prayed. Eventually, the doctors' consensus was that Davis was in such good condition that he didn't need the surgery. He gets a stress test after every season to double-check.

 

Amazing that we have such a strong-willed person on this team that embodies the spirit of never giving up. That and his relationship with Beason through rehabs is outstanding.

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