NFL Network reporter Kim Jones went public Tuesday with the first details of just how close she came to losing her life back in November — when she went on social media to say, “Great doctors saved my life — but that’s for another day.”
That day of opening up came Tuesday, when Jones, 49, w🌃ith host Mike Francesa to reveal she had suffered an “aortic dissection” while covering a Washington Redskins practice.
Jones — back at work and covering the Super Bowl for NFL Network — described her medical crisis as one in which layers of the aorta separate, making it susceptible to rupture. She said she was told by one cardiologist, “80 percent don’t make it to the hospital.”
Aꦑccording to the Mayo Clinic’s website, if an aortic rupture pierces the vessel’s outer wall, the condition is o💮ften fatal.
“My neck got hot on both sides,’’ Jones recalled during the interview on WFAN, where she also works as a host. “I was at the Redskins (practice facility) and all of a sudden … I knew it was something out of the ordinary.’’
Jones said there were “many heroes” that November day, st🎃arting with Redskins medical personnel and later surgeons at Inova Fairfax (Va.) Heart and Vascul🐠ar Institute, where she spent two weeks.
“I was at practice that day, it was a Thursday,” Jones recalled. “I went in the locker room, I had great stuff that day. … There are many, many heroes (from that day). The Redskins started (the care) off. Dr. West, their team physician, I will always be grateful to her. Tony Wiley in PR. (Redskins owner) Daniel Snyder’s wife came to visit me in the hospital.
“It’s a wonderful story and my luck has continued,’’ she added. “But I was incredibly lucky.”
Back on Nov. 28, after being released from the hospital, Jones ♔took to Instagram to say, “The surgeons saved my life … against big odds.”
But until Tuesday, she had kept the specifics prꦆivate.
Tuesday, she told Francesa, she no🐈w “feels great.”