Daniel Evangelista returned to classes at Blessed Trinity High School just 10 weeks after his collapse on the football practice field sent him to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta for emergency brain surgery.
“I remembered I was at a football practice. I had a really bad headache. But I don’t remember like right after that,” he told Rough Draft about that day in October.
He later learned he had run off the field, threw up, and had to be helped to a bench by a friend before he passed out.
When his mother, Mary Ellen Evangelista, got the call that he had collapsed, she insisted that an ambulance take him to Children’s. She got to the high school from Sandy Springs before the ambulance, and when it finally arrived it took 45 minutes to get to the hospital.
Daniel’s father, Drew Evangelista was in Houston, Texas, for work. He couldn’t get a flight back home until the next day. He hoped that his son was just suffering from a severe migraine. But he was on the phone when the surgeon said Daniel needed surgery immediately, and they weren’t sure he would survive the operation.
Dr. William Boydston, a Children’s neurosurgeon, performed the delicate surgery to release the pressure in Daniel’s head and remove one of the two brain bleeds/blood clots. Those resulted from arteriovenous malformation (AVM), an abnormal tangle of blood vessels, according to Children’s.
Coaches and friends came to the hospital to support the family and await the news. Daniel’s brother borrowed a car and drove from college to be with him, arriving at 2 a.m., knowing he’d have to drive back to college that same morning.
Mary Ellen said the hospital chaplain was amazing as he kept going to the OR to get updates. A group of people including friends and Daniel’s coaches stayed with her at the hospital.
Boydston and Dr. Barun Brahma, another Children’s neurosurgeon, performed follow-up surgery to remove the AVM and second blood…
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