To Chuck, J.D., and the others who think COVID “isn’t a big deal for young people/it’s really nothing more than a bad cold”.... Please see below article from today in the Athletic. Oh, and to Chuck, I guess my sources about Stalock, Marco Rossi, and other NHL players being diagnosed/suffering from significant post-Covid myocarditis aren’t so bad after all.
https://links.e1.theathletic.com/a/c...gz8VxJPuchU%3D
Here’s some excerpts from the article. Just in case Chuck has trouble reading the whole thing...
Coming off a 20-win season, Stalock was expected to enter this season as new No. 1 Cam Talbot’s backup. That was until an upper-body issue popped up out of nowhere, turned Stalock’s life upside down and caused him to miss all of training camp and the first six weeks of the season.
To be respectful of Stalock’s privacy during what was a very hard time for the veteran goaltender, the Wild have kept Stalock’s medical condition on the hush-hush and labeled it an upper-body injury.
What’s frightening is the upper-body “injury” was to his heart, Stalock revealed publicly for the first time Monday to
The Athletic.
In November, Stalock was stunned when he was diagnosed with
myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — after testing positive for COVID-19.
The risk with myocarditis is it can lead to cardiac arrest or sudden death, especially if an athlete gets his or her heart rate up.
On Nov. 19, Stalock was tested for the coronavirus in order to get cleared to officially enter the Wild’s TRIA Rink practice facility in order to get ready for the upcoming hockey season. The next day, at 3 o’clock, he was driving to his friend’s cabin with his wife and three children when the Wild team doctor called to tell him he tested positive for the virus. Stalock’s wife, Felicia, immediately put a mask on herself and their children, and the family turned around to return to the Twin Cities.
Still, Stalock didn’t believe he had the virus. He had no symptoms and maintains he still never had a single symptom from having the virus. He thought it had to be a false positive and asked to get clearance to the Wild’s practice facility.
But following NHL protocol, doctors told him he first needed to go through a cardiac screening even though he was symptom-free. Stalock took an EKG and echocardiogram figuring it was just a formality and, bluntly, a waste of time. But doctors immediately noticed an abnormality and ordered an MRI to get a better look at his heart.
“When they got a better picture, sure enough, they said, ‘You have myocarditis — a swelling or edema in your heart,’ and you can’t do anything for the next six weeks,” Stalock said. “It was just crazy. It was right at the time where they were finding this in a lot of athletes after having COVID,
especially in college football.
“Those first couple weeks were scary. You go on the internet and read stuff and you’re like, ‘Holy shit.’ I was completely asymptomatic, but they think because I had no symptoms and had it in my system that because it was right at the time where we were ramping things up with skating and working out and ramping up for the season that my heart was working and working and working and started to get stressed and swell because of the virus in my system. I mean, that’s pretty scary. We have two kids and just had a newborn baby and then you find out this news, so there was a lot going on there for a couple weeks.
“It was mentally draining and very frustrating. Every doctor you talk to, they’re like, ‘This is so new, we don’t know what can happen.’ And you’re like, ‘Well, that doesn’t help.’”
Stalock is the second Wild player to suffer from complications from having COVID-19. Like Stalock,
first-round pick Marco Rossi failed his cardiac screening after the world junior championships and similarly was told he can do nothing for six weeks. He’s currently back in his native Austria and will soon return to Minnesota to get reexamined by Wild doctors and specialists.
Also, here’s a link to a podcast that Athletic writer Michael Russo has with the president of Mayo Clinic Labs, Dr. William Maurice. Very interesting stuff.
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But hey Chuck, Covid’s no big deal...Right?
