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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Akeem in a coma

Foot­baller Suf­fered mas­sive strong on Sat­ur­day night

by

20131229

Doc­tors say there is noth­ing more they can do for foot­baller Akeem Adams who slipped in­to a co­ma on Sat­ur­day night af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive stroke.The 22-year-old Fer­enc­varos play­er had been wait­ing for a heart trans­plant for the past three months af­ter suf­fer­ing a heart at­tack in Hun­gary in Sep­tem­ber. He has been ward­ed in the ICU of V�ros­ma­jori Heart Clin­ic in Bu­dapest.Ac­cord­ing to a re­port on the So­ca War­riors Web site, Adams suf­fered se­ri­ous bleed­ing to his brain as a re­sult of the stroke.

"It seems like on­ly a mir­a­cle can save him now," said a source, who pre­ferred to re­main anony­mous un­til Fer­enc­varos made an of­fi­cial state­ment."Even if he does come through, the dam­age to his brain could mean that he is not the same again. It is re­al­ly hor­ri­ble news."The of­fi­cial Fer­enc­varos Web site con­firmed that Adams' con­di­tion has be­come crit­i­cal but asked for pa­tience and that the pri­va­cy of the play­er be re­spect­ed.

The sud­den down­ward turn in Adam's con­di­tion came as a shock to his fam­i­ly and friends back in T&T since on Box­ing Day he had spo­ken to sev­er­al of them and said he was in good spir­its and that doc­tors ex­pect­ed to per­form the trans­plant on Feb­ru­ary 4.Adams has been in a Bu­dapest heart clin­ic since he suf­fered a mas­sive heart at­tack in his apart­ment. He had been based in Hun­gary since Au­gust on a year-long con­tract with top foot­ball club Fer­enc­varosi TC.

The 22-year-old was tak­en to a Bu­dapest hos­pi­tal af­ter com­plain­ing of dizzi­ness af­ter his club scored a 3-1 win over arch-ri­vals Ujpest. Adams had played six match­es for the 26-times Hun­gar­i­an cham­pi­ons.One of his team­mates, Tamas Csilus, re­called: "Af­ter train­ing we were talk­ing a lot and smil­ing and even danc­ing a bit. Then, about three hours af­ter, Akeem called the woman at the club and said he wasn't feel­ing good."Ten min­utes lat­er we found him out at his home and he was rushed to the hos­pi­tal."

Af­ter the heart at­tack, Adams un­der­went four emer­gency op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing one in which he was fit­ted with an ar­ti­fi­cial heart and a life-sav­ing pro­ce­dure in which his left leg was sur­gi­cal­ly re­moved due to necro­sis (cell death) in that limb. That com­pli­ca­tion arose be­cause of the col­lapse of Adam's cir­cu­la­tion fol­low­ing the heart at­tack.

The surgery was suc­cess­ful and Adams' cir­cu­la­tion sta­bilised but his con­di­tion re­mained crit­i­cal.Chief car­di­ol­o­gist at Hun­gary's Na­tion­al Sport Cen­tre Dr Szelid Zsolt had said on club's Web site that the surg­eries pre­vent­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther heart at­tacks but Adams' vas­cu­lar sys­tem was still crit­i­cal.

Adams' health had im­proved last month and doc­tors were hope­ful that he would have been strong enough for a heart trans­plant be­fore Christ­mas. How­ev­er, the an­tic­i­pat­ed trans­plant nev­er ma­te­ri­alised be­cause of slow heal­ing fol­low­ing the am­pu­ta­tion of his leg.

In T&T, thou­sands of con­cerned cit­i­zens pur­chased "I sup­port Akeem" T-shirts from Na­tive Spir­it, as part of a Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's Heart of a War­rior fund-rais­ing dri­ve for the play­er. Help al­so came from pri­vate groups, in­clud­ing the So­caWar­riors.net fan site, his al­ma mater, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, and Pro League clubs, Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral FC.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple in Bu­dapest do­nat­ed blood to the crit­i­cal­ly ill, who had on­ly joined the Hun­gar­i­an top flight club in Au­gust. Com­pa­nies there do­nat­ed thou­sands of eu­ros to his care and Fer­enc­varos paid for Adams' moth­er An­cil­la Dick, and broth­er Aki­ni Adams to trav­el to Hun­gary on Sep­tem­ber 28 to be at his side.Adams made his pro­fes­sion­al de­but in 2008 with W Con­nec­tion, be­fore mov­ing to Unit­ed Petrotrin a sea­son lat­er.

He re­ceived a tri­al with the Seat­tle Sounders of Ma­jor League Soc­cer and played the sec­ond half of an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against Chivas de Guadala­jara on Oc­to­ber 12, 2010, in Seat­tle.


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