Young Phoenix soccer player who suffered cardiac arrest nearly cleared to go back onto the field
PHOENIX - Doctors are working to figure out what caused 18-year-old LeBron James' son "Bronny" to suffer a cardiac arrest episode during basketball practice.
A Valley dad knows exactly what the NBA star and his family are going through.
"What should we have done? What should we have known? If I’m LeBron talking to doctors today, a guy that’s worth a billion dollars and has the financial means to do whatever he can to protect his kids, and seeing a moment where you felt like as a dad you didn’t do that, is how I entirely felt," Matt Midkiff said.
Pyper Midkiff almost cleared for soccer after cardiac arrest
Doctors are working to figure out what caused 18-year-old LeBron James' son "Bronny" to suffer a cardiac arrest episode during basketball practice. A Valley dad knows exactly what the NBA star and his family are going through.
He was in LeBron James’ shoes a mere 13 weeks ago when his 12-year-old daughter Pyper went into sudden cardiac arrest on the soccer field. Days later, Pyper’s twin sister Emeri was diagnosed with the same condition.
Young soccer player recovers from cardiac arrest
A 12-year-old Arizona soccer player is released from the hospital after collapsing on the field - she suffered a cardiac arrest while at practice on April 27. Support streamed in from the soccer community and beyond, here in the Valley and across the country, for Pyper Midkiff.
"Their heart functions normally and has their entire life, 99.9% of the time. But, it’s that one beat, where if it throws it off a little bit, the heart goes into chaos," he said.
The twins now have pacemakers to regulate their hearts.
Their story is somewhat of a miracle. In a few weeks, they’ll likely be cleared by their doctor to go back to playing soccer.
"There’s probably not a perfect decision in the matter, but it seems to be a worse decision to put our kids in bubble wrap for the rest of their life and tell them they can’t do anything when they feel like they can, and all these other athletes that have gone back to sport with a defibrillator are doing fine," the father said.
Arizona family says its 'experienced lifetimes of love' as young soccer player begins to heal
"We signed her up for a cooling study for her body, which is what Hamlin, the Bills' football player went through, it's what Christian Eriksen, the soccer player, went through when they had heart conditions. To try to keep her brain and liver and kidney and heart functions as normal and minimize tissue damage moving forward as possible," Pyper Midkaff's father, Matt, said.
He's making it his mission to bring awareness to echocardiogram and EKG testing in young people to try and prevent what happened to his girls.
"If I'm a father, if I’m putting myself where I was three months ago, where LeBron is today, I’m like, just tell me what we should be doing and let me tell the world that they should be doing it, because stuff like this can’t be happening to our kids. Definitely not mine," Midkiff said.