Sam Mitchell reveals details of nightmare trip to New York with family

Sam Mitchell thought he was taking a dream family holiday to New York. He was wrong. Go inside the calamitous New York trip that ended in a race to track down burglars to get home.

Hawthorn Football Club pre-season training at Deakin University Waurn Ponds campus in Geelong. Sam Mitchell. Picture: Brad Fleet

Sam Mitchell was burning up.

As the bitter chill of a New York winter drove the street temperature down to below freezing, the ailing Hawthorn coach felt as if every organ in his body was “on fire.”

It was four days before Christmas last year and Mitchell was wheeled out of The New Yorker Hotel foyer to an ambulance for his second trip to New York University hospital in as many days - with genuine fears for his health.

The previous morning, after having a raspy cough and a sleepless night of deep sweats, he had collapsed at breakfast in front of his family.

That led to the first hospital trip, which his wife Lyndall insisted upon, despite his initial protests, where he was told he had Influenza A.

He was released later that night.

Sam Mitchell being moved into an ambulance in New York. Picture: Supplied

But this second trip to NYU was more concerning with greater uncertainty. He had been unable to get out of bed and could barely communicate.

Mitchell recalled this week: “The ambulance people were saying ... ‘it is a genuinely cold day today, get ready for it’.”

“It was minus two (degrees). I had a puffer jacket and they (the medicos) put it over me. I felt like every organ in my body was on fire, and they were putting more things on top of me.

“It felt like my insides were on fire.”

He had gone in the ambulance the first time as a reluctant patient on Lyndall’s insistence. This time, he knew he had no choice. He needed urgent attention.

“The first time it happened, I was being taken to hospital,” he said. “The second time - and this is not my natural outlook - I knew this had to happen … do it now!

“I am not trying to have a good holiday (anymore), I am trying to get through. It went from quality of life … to life.”

First admission

Six weeks on from the dream family holiday that, for a time, turned into a nightmare, Mitchell is back to full fitness.

He is again working full-time, having fully recovered from his illness, and is eagerly planning for and looking forward to the Hawks’ 2024 season.

But in this first expansive interview since he spent seven days in hospital in December, the 41-year-old has documented for the first time the ordeal he and his family went through as well as the full extent of his illness.

He says if it hadn’t been for the care of the medical staff in New York, and importantly his wife and kids, as well as a handful of Hawthorn people including head of football Rob McCartney and two doctors closely connected to the club, it could have been a different outcome.

The Mitchells had been planning this New York Christmas for several years. When their schedules aligned, they leapt at the chance to take son Smith, 13, and twin daughters Scarlett and Emmerson, 12 on what was meant to be the quickfire trip to the Big Apple.

Mitchell and family on their nightmare of a holiday

When the Hawks coach started to develop a “bit of a cough” a few days into the trip, he felt the need to push through.

“We left on the 17th (of December) … and we had three good days there,” he said. “On the third day there, I started to feel as if (I had) a bit of a cold. But it was two degrees (and I was thinking) ‘I am not getting sick’.

“We had a great day (on December 20) … We went over the Brooklyn Bridge and did some really cool stuff. I did well (to get through it).”

But Mitchell barely slept that night.

“I had the sweats and I drank all the water in the room. It was progressively getting worse and it is easy (to see that) in hindsight. I was just like ‘I just have to get through, we are in New York, I am not being sick’.”

The plan was to visit the 9/11 Memorial that day, but those thoughts were about to be up-ended - as was Mitchell.

“I was no good,” he recounted.

“I was sitting with Lyndall and the three kids (at breakfast) and I said to Lyndall ‘I am not going to make it today, I am going to go back up to the room’.

“She was like ‘What do you mean you are not coming with us today? In my head I had been fighting it and fighting it.

“At that point, I got up as if I was going to go back to the room and I got three or four metres and I just woke up on the ground.”

He had collapsed in front of his family at the hotel’s Tick Tock Diner.

“I had passed out, eyes open, for two minutes,” he said. “When I woke up I was laying on the ground and one of the (hotel) employees was there and Lyndall was there. I was like ‘I am OK, just let me get back to the room, and Lyndall was like ‘You are not going to the room, there is an ambulance coming’.

“I said: ‘An ambulance? I’m just dehydrated. I will go to bed and sleep it off, I will be fine’. She said: ‘You passed out; you are going to the hospital.”

Mitchell was taken to the busy emergency department of NYU hospital where he underwent a series of tests.

Adam Simpson lent a helping hand for the Mitchells. Picture: Getty Images

West Coast coach and Mitchell’s good friend Adam Simpson was the only person the pair knew in New York at the time.

“Lyndall rings him (Simpson) and says ‘Sam has got to go to hospital, can you get to NYU?’. He said: ‘I’ll be there in 15 minutes’. He meets Lyndall and takes the kids for the day.”

After hours of waiting in the corridors, the initial diagnosis finally came back.

“I will never forget the guy who walks up to me and goes ‘the blood test is back, you have got Flu A’,” Mitchell said.

“The relief was ‘thank god’. (The guy) says ‘you are going to be knocked around, this takes a couple of days. One doctor said four days; another said two days. (My thought) was ‘I just have to get better. I can’t be sick. Let’s get over this’.”

Action plan

It became apparent early the next morning Sam wasn’t just going to “get over” it. Thankfully, his wife recognised this, and 911 was dialled again.

“The next morning I couldn’t get up … I couldn’t wake up,” Mitchell said. “She (Lyndall) calls an ambulance, they come and take me back and we go through the same process again.

“If I had been there by myself, could I have got to the phone and rang reception or 911 to get help? Probably … but not definitely.”

Mitchell was regressing.

The NYU medical team went to work on trying to find out what else was wrong with him.

But there was another team also working on his behalf half a world away.

From the moment he had taken ill, Lyndall had the foresight to call McCartney in Australia.

That link ended up being part of an action plan to ensure that Mitchell’s condition was being assessed both inside and outside the bustling NYU emergency department.

Current Hawks board member Dr Anne-Marie Pellizzer - a perioperative physician - started an around-the-clock analysis of Mitchell’s readings from back in Melbourne.

Former board member Dr Andrew Kaye, a neurosurgeon now based at a hospital in Jerusalem, also made key assessments from Israel.

“The first thing Lyndall did was to call Rob McCartney, and Rob said to call Anne-Marie, so between Lyndall, Rob, Anne-Marie and Andrew Kaye, who is a friend and mentor of mine and who is in Israel as a brain surgeon … we had plenty of support.”

Mitchell had plenty of support overseas. Picture: Getty Images

Diagnosis

While Lyndall was wary of being a nuisance to an already overworked medical team on the ground, Pellizzer and Kaye urged her to stay focused and remain in communication.

“Fear is quite a natural response to anything unknown,” Mitchell said.

“When you are trying to work out what is going on, and there are lots of possibilities that were being voiced to us … ‘it could be a blood clot’, ‘he could have a blood clot in his lung’, ‘it could be a heart problem’, ‘it could be a heart attack’.

“On the first day I got sick, Lyndall was taking photos of the screens (monitors) and sending them to Anne-Marie.

“(At one stage) Anne-Marie said ‘don’t take him home … his oxygen levels are too low.’

“Mine was dipping into the 80s. I don’t know what that means, but it is the beginning of multi-organ failure. As soon as you go below 92, you (can) start to get tissue degeneration.”

NYU doctors also noticed issues with his lungs.

“The first X-rays was like ‘We can see some collapsing of the lung, and the second X-rays 24 or 36 hours later was ‘extensive collapsing of both lungs’, one of the doctors was saying,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said he had blocked out most of the pain he endured, apart from feeling like he was “on fire”.

His temperature was 103 and over for much of the time.

Finally, he and Lyndall were informed he had a “cocktail” of issues, including Influenza A, parainfluenza, Superadded bacterial pneumonia, campylobacter gastroenteritis and several other issues, which had led to the beginnings of multi-organ failure.

Thankfully, his age and his fitness levels, worked in his favour as he fought back against the illness.

“Bacterial pneumonia … is treatable but quite aggressive,” he said. “The thing that the doctors said at the end, when they looked at the medical charts, they were like ‘wow’ … they said ‘You have got a fair cocktail of stuff here’.”

Christmas day

Mitchell was then moved to an infectious diseases room and was slowly on the improve.

“I was desperate to get out on Christmas Day,” he said. “The most emotional I got was when they told me ‘you are not getting out’.

The family had tickets to see an NBA game on Christmas Day, but Lyndall took the kids in between hospital visits.

“Lyndall was going into the hospital at 6am, spending six to nine (in the mornings) with me (then going back to the kids before returning to the hospital),” he said.

“She was on the phone the whole time to Rob, Anne-Marie and Andrew Kaye.

Mitchell masked up with daughter Scarlett.

“I can’t believe how resilient they (the kids) were. I don’t know at what age you stop caring about yourself, but it is not at that age. They didn’t ask about themselves. They didn’t say, ‘Mum why is this happening?.”

It became more challenging when news of Mitchell’s health battle finally made the news back in Australia on Boxing Day.

“Lyndall was playing it all down to (the kids), saying that (he) is just dehydrated and on a drip. But they were old enough to know it is on the news back home and their friends are texting them, asking about their dad.”

Long road home

Mitchell was discharged on December 27, but was told he couldn’t fly at all until January 3 and couldn’t embark on the long road home to Melbourne for seven more days.

“We flew to LA on the third (of January) and we went to Disneyland and did heaps of cool s*** and my energy levels were pretty good,” he said.

They were booked to return to Melbourne on January 10, and with a late night flight, went to The Grove Shopping Centre to fill the time.

But even that turned into yet another unexpected challenge.

They returned back to their car later in the day to find it had been robbed.

“The back left window (was) down,” he said. “I was like ‘Who has left that (open)? We walk over to the car and there is glass everywhere. All of our suitcases are there … but our backpacks … are gone.

“We had our phones in our pockets, except for one of my daughters who left her phone in the car. They had taken everything ... computer, headphones, passports, chargers.”

With the passports gone, and the deadline to their flight approaching, a return home that night looked doubtful.

But some quick thinking from the Hawks coach - who managed to track the locations for his stolen airpods and a set of headphones - and the work of the LAPD and The Grove security staff provided some hope.

“Lyndall is on the phone to the police and telling them what is happening … and I am tracking the airpods and headphones. I had them in my bag. The airpods were in the same plastic pocket as the passports.

“I am showing (the policeman) what is happening with the headphones and he is ringing his buddies who are chasing the car. Eventually they pulled him over, and all of our stuff is there, except for our passports and a few other things.”

The airpods were then tracked to a bus stop on a median strip. They were found in a nearby bin and thankfully so were the five passports - just in time for the Mitchell family to head to the airport.

Mitchell is now back at Hawthorn training for the pre-season. Picture: Brad Fleet

They arrived home on January 12, and while Mitchell was told to slowly reintegrate himself back into the football program, he is now all systems go on leading the Hawks into 2024.

He is back to full fitness, but remains grateful for the support he and his family received during their ordeal.

“I just want to thank the people who helped,” he said of the support he received.

“It (sounds) corny to say it (the football club) is a great place to work (with) great people ... until you need it.

“(It shows) how important the support of a good workplace is.

“I wasn’t sick before this … I picked up one bug and then another bug and the immune system (was) obviously compromised.

“But I am 100 per cent fine now.”

Originally published as Sam Mitchell reveals details of nightmare trip to New York with family