On Aug. 31, 2016, my husband and I were at our son Jarron’s eighth grade basketball team’s tryouts when we saw him fall facedown on the floor as he was walking away from a drill. When he didn’t move, we looked at each other and thought he was embarrassed or just being silly, but as he continued to remain facedown and still, we joined his coaches in running to his side. I got to him as they were rolling him over, and I saw beads of sweat on his forehead and his eyes rolled back.
My husband and I were at our son Jarron’s eighth grade basketball team’s tryouts when we saw him fall facedown on the floor.
About 1 in every 300 young people is at risk for sudden cardiac arrest, and approximately 2,000 people under age 25 die from sudden cardiac arrest each year. Because there were people nearby who were able to perform CPR and because there was a nearby automatic external defibrillator that worked, Jarron not only survived, but returned to the basketball court. Now, almost seven years later, he’s training to become a firefighter/EMT so he can help someone in the same way that first responders helped save his life.
According to a statement Tuesday from family of LeBron James, a similar thing happened to the superstar basketball player’s 18-year-old son, Bronny James, on Monday: “Yesterday while practicing Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest. Medical staff was able to treat Bronny and take him to the hospital.” The statement described Bronny James as stable and no longer in the intensive care unit.
Jarron was kept on a kind of life support called ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) for about a week. Later came an open-heart surgery that took hours.
There are people on social media disrespectfully wondering if James, who has signed on to play basketball at the University of Southern California, collapsed as the result of having gotten a Covid vaccination.
Our son, who was five years younger when he suffered a cardiac arrest than James is now, collapsed in 2016, more than three years before the Covid pandemic hit the United States. Doctors said an anomalous aortic origin of the coronary artery was the cause of his sudden cardiac arrest. The goal of that open-heart surgery was to correct the congenital heart defect my husband and I didn’t know Jarron had until he collapsed.
There are people on social media disrespectfully wondering if Bronny James collapsed as the result of having gotten a Covid vaccination.
My good news for the James family is that our son was released to play basketball with no restrictions. He played junior varsity and varsity and earned a scholarship to play in college. And now he’s training to be a firefighter.
Some people say there’s a “debate” about whether student-athletes should have heart screenings, but my family’s experience with sudden cardiac arrest makes me think there should be electrocardiogram heart screenings for all athletes between 11 and 25.
Shaquille O’Neal’s son Shareef O’Neal learned of his congenital heart defect and had open-heart surgery when he was 18. It wasn’t the end of Shareef O’Neal’s basketball career, and I pray it won’t be the end of James’. Sadly, though, some parents only learn of their child’s congenital heart disease in an autopsy report after a fatal sudden cardiac arrest. The members of my family have become strong advocates for student-athletes to be heart screened and for training student-athletes on how to use an AED. We live in Texas and have been inspired by the work of the Cody Stephens Foundation. Cody, 17, was about to graduate from high school and play college football when his parents lost him to a sudden cardiac arrest. When my son arrived at the hospital after collapsing, one of the first questions a doctor asked me was if he drank energy drinks. We answered no. We rarely drink anything but water in my house, but I strongly advise parents to not allow their children to have those drinks, because they may hurt young people who excessively down them. I’m thankful we don’t have to speak of our son in past tense, and I know the James family must be feeling the same way. I just as strongly recommend that parents request that their children have a heart screening during their annual medical visits or their annual sports physicals. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about that day in August 2016. I’m thankful we don’t have to speak of our son in past tense, and I know the James family must be feeling the same way. However, I have personally met many parents, too many parents, who can’t use the present tense when they talk about their young athletes. They had no idea their child had a congenital heart defect, and once they did learn about it, their child was gone.
Dana Franklin-Holden
Dana Franklin-Holden founded the nonprofit Holden Strong Awareness Campaign in 2017 after her then-13-year-old son Jarron Holden II’s sudden cardiac arrest and subsequent recovery. Holden Strong aims to increase communities’ awareness of sudden cardiac arrest, especially in student-athletes and provides EKG testing, along with CPR and AED training and certification, to student-athletes in grades 6-12. 
