BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) — February is National Heart Month, bringing awareness to heart diseases. In an open letter with The Unsealed with Lauren Britt, LSU basketball player, Shareef O’Neal speaks on how open heart surgery changed his life and almost cost him the game he truly loves.
O’Neal recalls when he was five-years-old, he noticed how fast his heart would beat and doctors telling him that it was a minor issue. Doctors performed a heart ablation, which is when scar tissue in your heart blocks abnormal electrical signals, and said he would be fine.
As he took the sport of basketball more seriously, in hopes to play on the same level as those in the NBA, he speaks on the moment when he received his first two college letters.
“I was 15 years old, I got my first two college letters from LSU and UCLA. Once I realized that I could be on the same level as the people I watched in the NBA, I fell in love with the game of basketball and dropped all those other sports,” said O’Neal.
He began his collegiate basketball career at UCLA. Before he was cleared to play, his trainer questioned him about his heart health and insisted on wearing a heart monitor for five days.
“While wearing the monitor, I got that feeling that I have gotten my whole life – the one where my heart races and I get lightheaded. A few days later, around 7:00 PM, my trainer brought me into the locker room and told me to call my mother,” said O’Neal.
It was in that moment O’Neal was told he could play basketball for the rest of his life and be fine, or attend practice tomorrow and go into cardiac arrest and die. He was given the option to stop playing sports to help keep his heart rate down or have open-heart surgery.
At the age of 18, O’Neal decided to have the surgery. He was nervous leading up to the day of his surgery. He questioned if he would be okay post-surgery. He recalls waking up after the procedure feeling like the start of a new life.
O’Neal says he does not take his surgery for granted and that he embraces his scar as a symbol of his new life. His message to anyone going through similar challenges is “you got this.”
To read the full open letter from Shareef with The Unsealed with Lauren Britt, click here.