BENTONVILLE — The day before teenager Will James collapsed from heatstroke two summers ago, he didn’t feel well at afternoon football practice.
His medical emergency in August 2010 left him hospitalized and in a medically induced coma for 10 days before his recovery could begin.
“It’s 100 percent preventable,” the 18-year-old from Little Rock said of heatstroke.
A matter-of-fact James was among those who told their stories last week at a luncheon in Bentonvillesponsored by the Rogersbased Kendrick Fincher Hydration Foundation.
The foundation is gearing up to educate the public in August, which is Heat Stroke Awareness Month. Its effort comes as football players around the country start preseason practices during an unusually hot, dry summer.
Heatstroke is the most serious of heat-related disorders otherwise known as heat stress, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It occurs when the body becomes unable to control its temperature.
Body temperature risesrapidly, to 106 degrees or higher within 10-15 minutes, and a person stops sweating, rendering the body unable to cool down. Death or permanent disability can result if the person doesn’t get medical help.
Heat exhaustion is a milder form of heat-related illness. It can develop after several days of exposure to high temperatures and inadequate or unbalanced replacement of fluids. If left untreated, it can progress to heatstroke.
Warning signs of heat exhaustion can include: heavy sweating, paleness, muscle cramps, fatigue, weakness,dizziness, headache, nausea or throwing up, and fainting. The skin may become cool and moist, and the pulse will be fast and weak, with fast and shallow breathing.
Fred Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, does an annual survey of football deaths and injuries dating back to 1931, the year the American Football Coaches Association initiated a first survey of football fatalities. The survey looks at direct and indirect causes, including heat illnesses and other causes such as head injuries.
In 80 years through 2011, surveying football at the high school, college, professional and semi-pro levels, he found at least 135 heatstroke deaths.
Mueller, who is a retired professor from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s exercise and sport science department and a former football player at that school, believes there should be prevention and response plans in place, including plans for breaks and hydration during practices and protocols for medical emergencies.
“Parents should get involved and know what the coaches’ plans are for taking care of their kids in hot weather,” he said.
NOT JUST A BAD DAY
“You have to look at it in a two-day span,” James said of his heatstroke experience.
The day before he collapsed, he had slept in late - until 1 p.m. - before “scarfing down” some breakfast, drinking a little bit of water and heading to the practice at Pulaski Academy in the August heat.
James wasn’t his usual self, and his coach told himto go home and get a good night’s rest.
“He just assumed I was having a bad day,” recalled James, who graduated in May from the west Little Rock private school.
James rested and drank plenty of fluids. The next morning, Aug. 13, he got up, showered and ate a good breakfast.
By the time practice started about 1:30 p.m. he was feeling weak and his memory of what transpired is now spotty. He recalls his coach telling him to “go pad up.”
“The last thing I remember is jogging off the field,” he said.
Those at practice would tell him later that during the practice, he was extremely lethargic.
“It was like my body was there, but nobody was home,” he said.
The team’s certified trainer, Todd Ross, recognized the signs of heatstroke, which can include hot, dry skin or profuse sweating; hallucinations; chills; a throbbing headache; high temperature; confusion; dizziness and slurred speech.
Ross and others there got James into the showers and started applying cold compresses.
“It’s fair to say if it weren’t for my athletic trainer, Todd, I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” James said after telling his story to a luncheon crowd of about 150.
Among the recommendations in Mueller’s 2011 report is having a certified athletic trainer on boardeach faculty, someone who is “adequately prepared and qualified.”
James was rushed to the hospital and placed in a medically induced coma for 10 days.
“The next thing I know, I’m waking up in an Arkansas Children’s Hospital bed,” he said.
The first full day of consciousness was more like a dream state, in which his hospital bed appeared as a houseboat, with a dock in the distance where people were walking by. On the second day he was back to reality, James said, and recognized the passing people as doctors and nurses.
KILLER HEAT
Chris Mortensen, a longtime sports journalist and NFL analyst for ESPN, cited the August 2001 death of Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman Korey Stringer as a milestonein the public’s awareness of heatstroke.
Stringer died of exertional heatstroke after a preseason practice session, according to the website of the Korey Stringer Institute. Stringer’s wife, Kelci, founded the institute, which seeks to prevent sudden deaths in sports, particularly those caused by heatstroke.
The University of Connecticut-based institute promotes a focus on hydration, phase-in programs for heatacclimatization, and on-site medical care.
Mortensen said it was hard for him to relate to the notion that heat can kill because of circumstances and culture.
Being California-raised, he said, “I grew up in that era of ‘We’re going to go out and beat the heat.’”
It wasn’t until he moved to Atlanta that he learned all about heat, humidity and the heat index that factors the two together.
These days, he said, the National Football League and the makers of Gatorade are working to educate the public “on what the heat index is.”
NOT ABOUT TOUGHNESS
John George briefly told the crowd his story.
“I was a victim of a heatstroke in 1974,” said George, the public address announcer for Arkansas Razorbacks basketball since 1981 and forits football games the past 11 years.
“You know how when you’re in high school, you’re so tough.”
After his public remarks, George said he’d never worried about getting too much sun as he played on the Springdale High School golf team and had been out in the sun all his life.
When he was 18 and a senior in high school, one of his summer jobs included the re-roofing of a rental house.
“The heat was about like it is now,” George recalled.“We’d been working three days straight on this roof.”
About the third day, by midafternoon, George began feeling faint.
He had, in fact, stopped sweating, though he didn’t notice it at the time.
He took a break in the shade to drink water and stayed there a couple of hours. But by day’s end, “I couldn’t even drive home.”
The next day he was hospitalized for what would become a three-week stay.
“When I saw the doctor, he knew what it was,” George said, adding that he was treated with intravenous solutions of glucose along with rest and fluids. George contracted pneumonia during his stay, which complicatedhis recovery.
“I was coherent the whole time; just very, very, very weak,” George said.
Once home, it was several weeks before he regained enough strength to function “semi-normally,” he said.
“I was very susceptibleto heat for another year,” George said, meaning any time he went out in the summer heat, he’d feel weak. It didn’t even have to be a 100-degree day.
George is glad to see that modern-day athletic, band and cheerleading practices “have people in charge of hydration,” ordering up breaks and monitoring fluid intake. During the recent LPGA golf tournament in 102-degree weather at Rogers, George drank eight 12-ounce bottles of water and five 12-ounce bottles of Gatorade in a fourhour period.
While he did perspire, he never went to the restroom, he said.
That was a sign illustrating how much of the fluids his body required to stay hydrated, he said.
Reports prepared by the sport injury research center can be viewed at: www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi. The 2011 report can be found at www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/ 2011FBAnnual.pdf.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 07/29/2012