Jessica Pegula has relived the trauma she suffered during the summer of Australian tennis when a Buffalo Bills player suffered a cardiac arrest, mirroring her mother’s experience.
Key points:
- NFL Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin made headlines around the world when he collapsed during a game and received CPR after going into cardiac arrest.
- Team owner and president Kim Pegula experienced a similar episode at home in June 2022 and had to be resuscitated by her daughter Kelly.
- One of her other daughters, tennis star Jessica Pegula, spoke of her shock over Hamlin’s incident and her mother’s ongoing health problems.
Pegula revealed that her mother Kim, co-owner and president of the NFL franchise Buffalo Bills and NHL hockey team Buffalo Sabres, struggled with significant language and memory issues after suffering cardiac arrest in June 2022 and nearly dying.
The shock of that night returned to him when Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field during the Jan. 2 game at Cincinnati. in what Pegula described as “a weird, messed up, coming full circle moment.”
“My stomach sank because it was the exact same thing. I was sitting on the bench at a tennis event in Sydney, Australia. I wanted to vomit,” Pegula wrote in an essay for The Players’ Tribune published Tuesday.
“I was supposed to play mixed doubles in 15 minutes and I remember saying to one of my teammates, ‘I’m a little panicked right now, it’s too close to home and I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack.'”
Pegula was preparing to play a United Cup mixed doubles match with Francis Tiafoe for the United States against Germany. The world number four won that match, and then the entire event.
As Hamlin began her recovery, Pegula joined a wave of support from fans and the NFL and wore a white patch screen-printed with Hamlin’s uniform number while playing at the Australian Open, during which she reached the quarterfinals of singles and the semifinals of women’s doubles.
“I didn’t feel like it was just for him, it felt like it was for my mom too,” she wrote.
World number four Pegula, 28, said her mother went into cardiac arrest in her sleep and received life-saving CPR from another girl until paramedics arrived and restored her heartbeat.
Buffalo Bills owner Kim Pegula – and mother of top tennis player Jessica Pegula – is still recovering from a heart attack she suffered last June. (Getty Images: Bryan Bennett, file)
Jessica was at home in Florida when she received a call from her sister Kelly around midnight on their mother’s 53rd birthday and learned that their mother was being rushed to the hospital.
“My mother was sleeping when my father woke up with a cardiac arrest and she was unconscious for quite a while,” she wrote.
Kelly, who lived with their parents, performed CPR — just three months after telling her family she planned to get certified in the employment procedure.
“I remember her telling us what she was doing in our family group chat,” Jessica wrote, “and my mom even responded, ‘Nice Kells! Now if we have a heart attack, you can revive us.'”
Today, Kim Pegula “can read, write and understand fairly well, but she has difficulty finding the words to respond,” Jessica wrote.
“It’s difficult to deal with and it takes a lot of patience to communicate with her, but I thank God every day that we can still communicate with her.
“Doctors continue to be amazed by his recovery, considering where he started, and his determination is the driving force.“
As the first woman to simultaneously serve as president of an NHL and NFL team, Kim Pegula “lived it and loved it, and everyone she met felt it,” Jessica Pegula wrote.
“Now we realize that all of that is probably gone. That she won’t be able to be that person anymore.”
P.A.
