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What would you give to watch your favorite NFL team go on a Super Bowl run?
A limb, perhaps? Or even just a finger or toe?
Because that’s what several Kansas City Chiefs fans sacrificed in order to attend an AFC Wild Card round victory over the Miami Dolphins in January.
Forecasts for the game, which Kansas City won 26-7 on Jan. 13, called for 5-degree weather with wind chills making the temperature feel anywhere from -10 to -20 degrees.
In reality, it was even worse.
Temperatures in Arrowhead Stadium dropped to minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit, with wind gusts up to 27 mph making for a wind chill of minus-27 degrees.
Several fans suffered from hypothermia and frostbite.
Now it could get worse for those same fans.
“The patients who had their frostbite injuries along with the Chiefs game, they are just getting to the point now we are starting to discuss their amputations that might be necessary,” Dr. Megan Garcia of the Grossman Burn Center at Research Medical Center said on Tuesday.
She continued to explain that 70 percent of the patients referred for frostbite injuries suffered earlier this year are now being advised to schedule amputations.
Even the lucky few who avoided amputation aren’t that lucky.
Those 30 percent underwent treatment the past few weeks in hyperbaric oxygen tanks. And their recovery will continue throughout their lives.
“It’s still a lifelong process,” Garcia said. “They’ll have sensitivity and pain for the rest of their lives and always will be more susceptible to frostbite in the future. So we are also educating them to make sure they stay warm for the years and months to come.”
Watching your team go on a Super Bowl run seems pretty cool. As a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan I can’t imagine how it feels. But I’m also not risking the use of limbs, fingers or toes to find out.