The Winters Mill varsity football player who needed medical attention and was medevaced to Shock Trauma from a game last Friday has been diagnosed with Long QT syndrome, a disorder that can cause fast, chaotic heartbeats known as arrhythmias, according to his mother, Dana Lyons.
Long QT syndrome can cause sudden fainting and seizures, according to the Mayo Clinic. It often does not have noticeable symptoms and is discovered through an electrocardiogram test, which is often not part of high school athletic physicals.
On Thursday, Greyson Lyons had a defibrillator placed in his heart to help him deal with the syndrome and will continue to be monitored at the Shock Trauma Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for a few more days, Dana Lyons wrote in an email to the Carroll County Times.
The prognosis, however, means the end of his football career, she said.
“Greyson will have no chance at any athletic career that includes physical contact,” Dana Lyons wrote in an email. “Of course he is devastated, but will redirect his life’s path once mentally and physically healed. He is alive and that’s all we are concerned with at this time.”
In a GoFundMe page started by Lyons’ oldest brother Grant, an update on Thursday said “the surgery went well and Greyson is continuing to recover.” The page has raised more than $31,000 as of 1 p.m. Thursday.
Lyons, a junior defensive lineman for Winters Mill, did not get up off the ground following a play with about two minutes left in the second quarter of last Friday’s game against St. John’s Catholic Prep in Frederick County. First responders performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, did chest compressions and used a defibrillator on him.
He was flown to Shock Trauma in Baltimore and the game was called off.
MRI results returned Wednesday showed no signs of brain damage and his mother said Greyson was walking and talking.
In a show of support, some students at St. John’s Catholic Prep on Tuesday wore gray ribbons, and on Wednesday students signed a get-well card for Lyons. A club at the school made bracelets Thursday, donating proceeds to the Lyons family.
Locally, other county schools have offered shows of support on social media. And a co-worker of Perry Lyons, Greyson’s father, Perry, at the Carroll County courthouse is producing grey wristbands with “Lyonsheart” inscribed on them and donating the proceeds to the family.
