Clemons back in Lehigh

July 29, 2008   ·   Paul Raymond   ·   Jump to comments

Good news from Philadelphia Eagles camp tonight, defensive end Chris Clemons is back on campus and scheduled to attend the nights defensive meeting. Clemons was released from Lehigh Valley Hospital earlier this evening. For those who don’t follow the Eagles, Clemons who was suffering from dehydration was taken by ambulance to an area hospital. During practice he fell to one knee on the field, and was then carted to the back. Due to his inadequate responses to team trainers and ambulance was called in. It’s important to note thou that he never lost consciousness and was pretty responsive after an IV was applied.

Team trainer Rick Burkholder said, “Chris had a sort of dehydration and probably a little bit of heat illness. It was so hot this morning and he ran out of fluids. We went through our protocol, we took him inside, got his body temperature cooled down through our cooling vest and hats and stuff that we do with all of our players that overheat, we got an IV started on him. He wasn’t as responsive as we liked, he wasn’t unconscious as it was reported, he was conscious through the whole thing. He just wasn’t responding to our questions the way we liked. And in those situations, my staff, we err on the side of caution.”

Another reason for caution was the team wasn’t sure if he suffered a head injury right before the dehydration set in. He underwent tests on his head and they all came back negative. In the end, everything just comes down to dehydration, no additional injuries.

SO, for Eagles fans the bottom line is this, if he’s healthy when do we get him back in practice. Buckholder said, “We’ll keep looking at his blood and urine levels to see when he’s super-hydrated and when he’s had a period of time when he’s not symptomatic.” The team will be keeping a close eye on him for sure thou, so don’t look for him to be going entire practices anytime soon.

Buckholder also said, “What we’ll do is we’ll make sure that he’ll have one of those internal thermometers put in him every day. We’ll have a heat sensor in him so that we know when his body temperature goes over the point where he could get into danger. The other thing is, we now have an electrolyte panel on some of the blood testing that we have on him and we’ll continue to do that inside now. We’ll try to match up how much fluid he needs, how much salt he needs, how much potassium he needs, how much magnesium, calcium, chloride, all that and we’ll try to match that up with Chris so he can go a little bit longer. Plus I’ll certainly be closer to his group now over the next couple of days when he returns. I don’t know what day he’ll return to practice, but he’s one that I’m trying to figure out.”

I can’t stand the Birds but I’m glad this kid is healthy. It’s never good to hear about something like this happening to anyone.

Don’t forget to get your Eagles tickets the season is rapidly approaching Some games are still going for as little as $20!! Here’s more details of the Buckholder interview about Clemons and Victor Abiamiri injury.

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