J.J., a high school senior who at 14 had been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, was working out with two friends on morning in May when the high school senior suddenly went into cardiac arrest.
J.J. was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy at the age of 14 following a routine EKG.
It was a scary moment for J.J. and his family, but things were going great for the teenager thanks to careful monitoring.
J.J. was on the wrestling team at his New Jersey high school, he was working out, and by May of 2024, the family had gone five years without any major incidents.
Then, everything changed in an instant.
"It was weird because he never wakes up. I mean, he could sleep through the house falling down," J.J.'s mother, Laura, tells Inside Edition Digital. "And he left me a note the night before asking me to wake him up at 7 a.m. because he was going to go work out. So I went in his room, and he's like, 'I'm already awake,' which was so weird"
On that morning, J.J. was headed to work out with his friends Trevor and Giovanni. Minutes after starting that workout, J.J. went into cardiac arrest.
"I was upstairs. Giovanni was just hanging out on his phone and J.J. was running on the treadmill," recalls Trevor of the events of that morning.
When J.J. suddenly went into cardiac arrest, 14-year-old Trevor sprang into action and started performing CPR while his mother called 911.
Trevor explains that he decided to get CPR-certified after a family friend suffered a pulmonary embolism. As a result, he more than likely saved his best friend's life.
As it turns out, any number of J.J.'s friends could have saved his life that day, because his wrestling coach, most of his teammates, and a number of his friends became CPR-certified after his initial diagnosis.
The key player for the family however was Dr. Matthew Martinez, Director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center.
Dr. Martinez had been guiding the family through J.J.'s health journey for years at that point, and answering all their questions ranging from if it was safe to still wrestle to if J.J. could go skydiving.
"So his condition is that his heart is too thick compared to everybody else and that can lead to a stiffening of the heart muscle, which allows it to become inefficient in pumping blood. It's a common cause of sudden death among people, and it is a common cause of sudden death among athletes as well," Dr. Martinez says of J.J.'s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
He continues: "That abnormal thickness leads to the muscle developing scar tissue. And we think that scar tissue leads to electrical instability, and when the electricity of the heart goes haywire, then you need only one thing to get it back into rhythm, and that's a shock."
After arriving at the hospital, things did not look great at first.
"He still didn't have a heart rate yet, he couldn't, couldn't get his heart to be steady. And they even told us, the doctor came out and said, 'We've done everything we can. I've done everything I can. His heart is working against us,'" Laura recalls.
At that moment she said that she and her husband just looked at one another and said nothing.
"And then 10 minutes later, he came back and said, 'I'm a little more optimistic. His heart rate is steady and his blood pressure is going up,'" Laura says.
J.J. was then transferred to Morristown, where Dr. Amirali Masoumi, the Medical Director of Cardiac Critical Care and Medical and Interventional Director of the Cardiogenic Shock and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at Morristown Medical Center, headed his care team
"It's crucial the care before he came to Morristown Medical Center," Dr. Ma.soumi says."His friends that they were, you know, very young. And they did a very good job."
A week after suffering cardiac arrest, J.J. started walking. And on May 23 he was discharged from the hospital.
Just in time for his high school prom and graduation.
"It was a great time. Yeah, first thing, like, first like event, I guess you could call it. back with my friends. It was just awesome," says J.J,
Inside Edition Digital spoke with J.J. just after a check-up with his doctor, during which he got more good news.
"I've, like, just found out about 10 minutes ago, that I can go back to the gym," J.J. says.
Related Stories
