Detroit Lions great Barry Sanders is speaking out about a shocking medical emergency he suffered last year.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame running back has been speaking to several media outlets about his ordeal and to promote a new A&E feature called, "The Making of a Heart Attack."
Airing on Saturday, June 14 at 1 p.m., Sanders' journey was shared along with several others stories to disclose risk factors, prevention measures and how to bounce back from a significant life event.
In several of his interviews, the 56-year-old shared what exactly he went through. The event occurred while he was on a recruiting visit with his son, Noah.
Sanders told Newsweek, "Well, I woke up, and I just felt sort of a burning, kind of like a heartburn type sensation right in the middle of my chest, and really just thought I was going to be able to kind of shake it off, you know. And so it just kind of lingered."
He left the recruiting visit and returned home to rest before ultimately driving himself to the emergency room. After doctors performed tests on him, it was revealed that he had indeed suffered a heart attack.
Being that he had not been in too much in distress, Sanders felt puzzled about what he had been experiencing.
"I was just puzzled. Like, man, what did I eat last night? Did I pull a muscle? And so it just lingered, or lingered until, you know, just later on in that day, I just said, 'let me drive myself to the emergency room' and, and that's what I did. I drove and went to the emergency room. And I'm sitting there and they run all these tests. They saw that certain enzymes were enzyme count was high. They were kind of puzzled, because I wasn't in distress, but other than this pain in the middle of my chest or heartburn, or whatever is what I thought it was, and so that's kind of, you know, that was kind of my process.
"And then they had a chance to look at, you know, the heart and realize that there had been some damage there. And I literally had a heart attack."
Sanders is speaking out in order to help others learn from his journey going through a life-changing event.
"It really gives you a kind of broad example of what people are dealing with out there and just information out there that hopefully can help people."
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