Prevention? Preparation?

I would suggest that you start at the town levwel. If you are able to lobby your town and hep to raise the needed funds to bu the needed AEDS it could be the start of a national trend. Maybe there is such a town out there. If anyone knows ofa heart smart town that has included athletic facilities please let us know.

I would like to start this off by saying I have not posted many times on the internet and lack a lot of computer savvy skills so try not to be to critical. I am going to try to post a letter I wrote to Brooke about my experience as a parent in order to get the word out on Wolf Parkinson's White syndrome. I believe it just might be an underlying cause of cardiac failure in atheletes. You hear about it all the time in the news, someone is doing what they have always done which involves physical activities and they drop on the court,field,track, or park. I can only relate what happened to me and get the word out and to start a dialouge which will entail communication and educational awareness. I hope you can overlook my grammatical errors!

Dear Brooke,

Hello my name is Tim and I hope you remember the phone call I gave to you about WPW and my son. I would like you to know the reason I contacted you is because I believe that, in my uneducated opinion, we have kids and even adults dying on our sports fields with cardiac failure due to this little known heart problem. I am not an expert, but to satisfy my conscience and maybe prevent someone from doing what I did, I am opening myself up for a little criticism 'just a little' and want to share my direct experience as a parent in order to help someone who might hear this message. I want to share my view and experience in order to help someone that is or might experience the same thing that I did and not "Underreact"! I would like to think I am an average parent when it comes to sports.

There is a lot of information on Wolf Parkinsons White syndrome and I believe that this issue should be thoroughly looked at when it comes to sports and sports medicine. I am not an alarmist and I don't believe is crisis management or scare tactics but I do believe that in the sports world this should be looked at and given some scrutiny! Especially with youth sports and the amount of athletes that you hear about in the news that die of cardiac associated problems.

Thanks for hearing me in our conversation and I hope you can help me post my message to everyone that will listen. I don't know of any websites that have youth oriented and even children oriented medicine that caters to the younger kids and parents with good information and advice. I honestly think you should open a website that is open to Dads also even though I feel more like a mom most times! Please get the word out and let your experts and editors know that I believe that this condition is more common than we know!

Thanks for your time

tkc

Thanks for reading and I will try to relate and answer any questions to the best of my ability considering my limited knowledge and only experience. tkc