The nationally（全国性地） televised（用电视播放） sudden cardiac（心脏的） arrest of NFL football player Damar Hamlin in January of this year was the first time in recent memory that sudden cardiac（心脏的） arrest entered the national consciousness. Sudden cardiac arrest. It even sounds like something that only happens in dramatic（戏剧的） and extraordinary（非凡的） circumstances（情况）. Even after this event, myself and I think most people still considered sudden cardiac arrest to be something akin（类似的） to getting struck（打） by lightning. Something you hear about often enough to know it exists, but it's still so rare you could never imagine it happening to you or to your child. On February 24, just 52 days later, my perfectly healthy 16-year-old son went into sudden cardiac arrest while sitting at his desk at school.
Sudden cardiac arrest is the third leading cause of natural death in the United States. It kills nearly 400,000 Americans annually（年年）. That is more than car accidents and breast（乳房） cancer（癌症） combined. And yet, shockingly, life-saving devices like AEDs and CPR training are not mandatory（命令的） in many schools nationwide. Did you know that? I certainly didn't know that.
And it's a rhetorical（修辞的） question anyway because as I've learned, since this became a part of my reality, most people have no idea. And when they find out, they're generally as shocked（震惊的） as I was to learn that AEDs are not federally mandated（授权） in schools or anywhere, really, it is so unusual that we do not talk about or prepare for sudden cardiac arrest given（做） its frequency（频率） of occurrence（发生）. We already do this for other unfortunate（ 不幸的） tragedies（悲剧）. The best example I can think of, accidental fires. We know we cannot predict or prevent accidental fires and so we have mandated that smoke detectors（探测器） and fire extinguishers are accessible（易接近的） in places where people gather. We take it very seriously.
We ask businesses and schools to conduct（指挥） regular fire drills. Why is it so easy for us to accept that risk? But there are schools who don't have AEDs. Even though a school district（区） is statistically more likely to have a student go into sudden cardiac（心脏的） arrest than they are to have a fire in the building, you will find a fire extinguisher in the building in all 52 states. In only 20 states is there required to be an AED. 20 states.
Out of hospital sudden cardiac arrest has a fatality（命运决定的事物） rate of 90%. Little did I know when I got that phone call, my precious（珍贵的） son had only a 10% chance of survival（ 幸存）. I will never forget the phone call that made the world stop. It was a police officer telling me my son had collapsed（倒塌） in class, was unresponsive and being transported to the hospital by ambulance（[车辆][医] 救护车）. I was out of town at the time. Over an hour away, no one could tell me anything.
I remember screaming（尖叫）, is he alive? And the police officer saying, ma'am, all I can tell you right now is that he is unresponsive.