When he woke up after 15 minutes unconscious, Malik Heath started hitting himself to make sure he wasn’t paralyzed.
It was Dec. 2, 2021, and an 18-wheeler had just crashed into the driver’s side door of a car Heath was driving. Heath, then a senior wide receiver at Mississippi State, said he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
The Clarion-Ledger reported at the time that Heath’s car was hit when he crossed the northbound lane of a Mississippi highway to head south and that police said there was no reason to suspect at the time that drugs or alcohol played a role in the accident.
Heath remembers regaining consciousness in his car — he said it took a long time for an ambulance to arrive — and wondering what had happened as he looked out the window, no longer in the driver’s seat as the crash had vaulted him across the car.
Once he exited the passenger’s side door, Heath said he started wheezing. He began coughing up blood shortly after arriving at the hospital. He said not only did both of his lungs collapse, but also that he broke his entire rib cage and ruptured his liver.
It was at the hospital in Mississippi that Heath again lost consciousness. He thought he was dying.
“Once I had passed out,” Heath said, “thought I was gone.
“I felt me fading away. I can’t explain it.”
The first hospital didn’t have the necessary equipment to treat him, Heath said, so he was airlifted in a helicopter to a Memphis hospital. Heath remembers regaining consciousness mid-flight.
Barely more than two years later, the 23-year-old undrafted rookie lifts his left arm in front of his locker inside Lambeau Field, revealing a scar below his left armpit. That’s where doctors inserted a tube to help expand his lungs and save his life.
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