Heart break

Athletes often say: play this match as if it were the very last in your life. But none of them, of course, are going to die on the field...

On October 13, Alexey Cherepanov, a 19-year-old hockey player from Omsk Avangard, was included in the list of national team players for the first time in his life. A dream come true. He was probably in a very good mood when he went out to the match in Chekhov against Vityaz that evening. Shortly after the start of the game, Alexey scored the puck. The last puck of my life in the last game of my life. Three minutes before the end of which his heart stopped. Less than two hours later, Alexei died.

This death became the main news of the day and the main topic of discussion on the Internet, because not just a hockey player died, but, by all accounts, the most talented player in this age category. He has already become a world junior champion, breaking the records of Ovechkin and Bure, who did not score so many goals at his age. A very young guy played with older men and played better than most of them. He was going to the NHL, but decided to wait a year, because in the summer the greatest Czech Jaromir Jagr, Alexei’s idol, signed a contract with Omsk, playing with whom was even more than a dream for him. They say that shortly before the tragic 57th minute, Cherepanov accidentally collided with Yagr on the court.

Many hoped that after Kovalchuk, Ovechkin, Malkin, another young superstar from Russia would appear in world hockey - Cherepanov. How things would have actually turned out, of course, is unknown. Now it won't work out anymore. There was a man - and there is no man.

However, this story immediately went beyond the scope of an ordinary accident, and more than just bitter obituaries can be written about it. The details of the tragedy were quite terrible. And everyone vying with each other rushed to look for the guilty, make guesses, and pass their own verdicts. The doctors who failed to save Alexey were even beaten by unknown people! The debaters were divided into two camps - those who stigmatize doctors and those who are on their side. The latter talk about what a dog, thankless and cheap job our hippocrats have. There are also those who criticize the club itself for releasing a player with a heart disease onto the court, which experts seem to be talking about, but the presence of which the club doctors deny.

I couldn’t help but remember the numerous stories of our athletes who went to foreign teams. Every time they are amazed by the medical examination procedure, which lasts for the whole day. Sometimes even two days. All analyzes and all tests. All organs will be checked and enlightened. And even such an examination does not give a 100% guarantee that the athlete is completely healthy. But why are our people so surprised by such meticulousness? Maybe because our work is often limited to a blood test and checking the pulse?

The reality is that now we know much less than is necessary to answer. But we have facts that no one denies yet. The player entered the court with a heart condition. This, of course, is not only our problem. In recent years, there have been a lot of reports of deaths during matches from football fields and hockey rinks. Footballers Miklos Feher, Marc-Vivienne Foe, Antonio Puerta, hockey player Sergei Zholtok - they died in front of thousands of people. Hockey players died in Canadian junior leagues. Detroit hockey player Jiri Fischer almost died. He fell, like Cherepanov, right on the bench. Only emergency resuscitation procedures saved the guy’s life.

Whether such procedures could have helped Cherepanov or not, we do not know, and we are not experts in these matters. But to save a person, at least all conditions must be created! But this did not happen in Chekhov. When Alexei lost consciousness, everyone rushed to the doctors. But there was no ambulance in the arena! And she had to be. According to the regulations of sports and public events in general, there must be doctors on site. Because sport is physical activity at the limit of human capabilities. This is also an emotional burden for the fans, of whom there are again thousands. These are possible accidents and incidents with large crowds of people. In general, the ambulance should have been there, but it wasn’t! They say that the brigade’s working day is over, and the fact that the game is not over yet is the tenth thing, they worked and went.

And when they called another ambulance, it arrived with discharged defibrillators! I say again: we don’t know whether it would have helped or not, but the doctors should have come to the rescue immediately and fully armed!

This year, for the first time, our national championship is being held under the auspices of the KHL. The organizers of the new league really got off to a great start, they have a lot of sound ideas and some of them are already being successfully implemented. The only thing that offends me is the constant, inappropriate and inappropriate, opposition to the NHL in the “Cold War” genre. Like, we’re about to catch up with them, surpass them, but we’re no worse off now, but it’s going to be really bad. But with all the millions of dollars in investments, the NHL arenas are equipped from a medical point of view, like modern clinics, and here you won’t find doctors! Jiri Fischer - God bless him! - alive, and Lesha Cherepanov... So you first need to do everything right at home and only then catch up and overtake someone.

The case with Cherepanov acquired such an all-Russian resonance because a very famous person died. But is this the only case, and is it only the famous who die? We just learn only about the most egregious cases. They showed an equally terrible story on TV. About a 9-month-old baby who was not taken to the hospital with acute abdominal pain. The doctors said that the hospital was departmental and demanded a certificate confirming affiliation with this department. There was no help. We drove forty kilometers to another hospital. By the time we got there, it was almost night. The doctors were tired, there was no time to delve into it. They injected me with something and postponed the examination until the morning. And in the morning it was already late. A child has died. And initially they tried to cover up the investigation due to the lack of evidence of a crime.

When this happens, for some reason we use small salaries, poor material resources, or something else as excuses. Someone said about an ambulance without a defibrillator that “in the outback there are problems with this.” What are the problems with charging the device? In what remote place? Chekhov is the Moscow region! Where does our outback begin - right outside the Kremlin gates? Every day we receive additional evidence that we live in a beautiful, dear, beloved, but uninhabitable country. Where, God forbid, if something happens to a person. An illness, a fire, an accident - you can’t wait for help, you can’t find the culprits, you can’t receive compensation later. Everything seems to be done for someone, and not for yourself. And all that remains is to wait until the thunder strikes, the rooster pecks, the crayfish whistles... Well, maybe now at least the ambulances will always be in the stadiums. And they will charge everything that is required in advance. But priceless human life cannot be returned!