Heartstopper

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. I am laying in a single bed with white sheets and a thin white blanket. It is a mechanical bed with buttons that allow either the head or foot to be raised. My head is elevated. On each side of me, there are silver safety bars, containing me so I don’t fall out. I have an IV in one arm and circular pads with wires coming out of them attached to my chest. A monitor behind me shows a pattern of multicolored waves that are ascending and descending in rhythm. Corresponding numbers flash at the bottom of the screen. I wonder what each means. The last time in my life I was attached to any sort of electrical monitor was when I gave birth to my son over twenty-five years ago. 

Over by the window on uncomfortable looking vinyl chairs sit my son and daughter looking at me worriedly.

“You’re awake!” My daughter says in relief. “You gave us such a scare!”

“What happened?” I ask uncertainly. I have no memory of how I got here. I don’t even know where I am, although I gather I am in some sort of hospital. 

“You’re in the hospital. In the cardiac step down unit.”

“Cardiac step down unit? What does that mean?”

“It’s one step down from ICU, intensive care,” my daughter explains. “You had a cardiac arrest at the gym.”

“Cardiac arrest? At the gym?” That sounds serious. I am confused.

“Yeah,” my daughter continues. “The person I talked to at the YMCA said a staff person found you on the floor convulsing. She and another member in the locker room performed CPR on you. Then, someone ran to get an ICD and they shocked your heart.”

I sit there stunned. My daughter swallows nervously, her voice solemn.

“It took them two shocks with the machine to start your heart beating again.” Her voice cracks. “If that lady wouldn’t have found you when she did, you would’ve died.”

I can’t believe what I am hearing. It sounds like a story about someone else. It can’t be me my daughter is talking about. Is this a nightmare? Am I about to wake up?

The last thing I remember is going to the YMCA to start the new year with good intentions. It was January 4th and I wanted to get in shape once again, to join something called the 100 Mile Club, where the goal is to swim one hundred miles throughout the course of the year. Each swimmer’s progress is tracked on a paper graph affixed to the wall. As someone who once swam long distance competitively and has swam laps on a regular basis throughout my whole life, at the time I thought I was in good enough shape to achieve that goal. With 52 weeks in a year, I wanted to jump right into it, literally and figuratively, by diving into the pool twice a week and swimming a mile each time. With math not being my strong suit, I calculated that amount of lap swimming would be enough to achieve my annual goal of one hundred miles.

My mind slowly returns to that day. January 4, 2023. I do remember some things. Not surprisingly, once I hit the water that day and started swimming, I remember becaming tired almost immediately. It was no big deal I figured at the time. I had been tired before when I first resumed working out after a prolonged period of inactivity. This too shall pass, I told myself. It would probably take a few swimming sessions, but I would once again get back into shape. My body would know when it was time and eventually rise up to the challenge. I had been down that road before. Like any other older person, my physical fitness went in spurts – years of inactivity followed by years of being active. The pendulum continually swung back and forth. Couch potato vs. fitness nut. The start of the new year was often a time when many people like me started with good intentions of working out. What I needed to be was more consistent in my exercise habits. 

I remember swimming along that day, doing the free style, cleaving through the water with a rubber swim cap on my head and googles over my eyes. One arm after the other, breathing on my left side, kicking my feet, trying to perfect my stroke and swim with good form. As I swam, however, I soon noticed that something just didn’t feel right. Everything seemed to be an effort. Normally it wasn’t so hard. I tried to pump myself up and keep going. I was a little out of breath, but that was to be expected. I just needed to get my swimming and breathing rhythm down, I told myself that day. I was a little rusty. 

The next thing I remember was feeling a pain smack dab in the middle of my chest. It was kind of a burning sensation, something that I had never experienced before. Maybe I was just extremely tired and out of shape, I argued with myself. As someone who is often the queen of denial, I was determined to ignore that pain and just keep going. “No pain, no gain” I had often heard. 

I kept going. With my one mile goal in mind, I started my last 500 yards or twenty lengths of the pool. The end was in sight. I tried to psych myself up. I had made it this far. I needed to keep going. Keep pumping my arms through the water, keep kicking. Just keep going. I tried to pretend the pain wasn’t there, but if anything, it was getting worse. 

That pain was starting to scare me. It just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t excruciating, but it definitely was there, lingering in the background like a toothache that you keep poking at with your tongue, try as you might to ignore it. Eventually, however, I couldn’t continue the fight. A voice of reason prevailed and something told me it was useless to continue swimming. The more I continued, the worse that pain seemed to be getting.

I didn’t think chest pain was something to take lightly. I had almost made my mile. I could resume my swimming another day I reasoned. No one was saying I had to do a mile all in one shot. Slow and steady wins the race. I was a tortoise. As a middle aged woman, a grandmother, I was no longer a hare. Who was I trying to fool anyways? 

With that in mind, I got out of the pool and grabbed my brightly colored beach towel and entered the locker room. I remember rinsing my hair to get the chlorine off, getting dressed, and even putting my favorite black winter coat on. I tried to keep my spirits up and tell myself that some sort of physical activity was better than nothing. It wasn’t a defeat. I was merely “a work in progress.” 

After that, everything is a blur and I remember nothing else until waking up in this very hospital room. My children asked for an official explanation from the YMCA. They were sent back a formal email with the chain of events that unfolded that day. A staff member with the same first name as me (Kim) doing a routine walk-through inspection of the locker room found me lying on the floor with my feet up on a bench.

As the other Kim came across me lying there on the cold, hard tile floor, I began convulsing. She rolled me over in a recovery position so I wouldn’t bang my head or bite my tongue. As she was doing this, I stopped breathing, and my heart stopped as well. She used her staff radio to tell someone to call 911. Another woman in the locker room, who luckily was a trained physical therapist and knew emergency medicine, performed CPR. Another staff member ran to get an AED.

After cutting my favorite coat, shirt and bra quickly off to get to my heart, they attached pads to my chest. The machine then analyzed me and advised that a shock was needed to get my heart pumping again. The shock was given, and the AED mechanical voice told my rescuers another shock was needed. The first hadn’t done the trick. My heart still wasn't beating. Another shock was given and the voice next advised my rescuers to continue CPR until medical help arrived. I then was driven at full speed in a screeching ambulance to the local hospital. 

I spent a week in the hospital and was eventually sent home with an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) that is an insurance policy in case my heart stops beating again. If that ever happens, the ICD will jolt my heart back into action. I will be kept alive by modern technology. 

Everything about me is now fake. As a librarian, I am familiar with creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction means a true story is embellished, but at its heart, remains true. Like a good fish story, the details are exaggerated, the fish made larger, the story of its catch more dramatic. I decide I am now myself creative nonfiction. Everything about me is real, but it has been enhanced by its storyteller. 

Being no longer young and with a serious medical condition, I am now embellished or altered in every way. Hair dyed blond (if it had its normal color, I would be a mousy brown with gray streaks), dental implants, contact lenses, and an insurance policy/battery charger in my heart. Should my heart ever stop beating again, the defibrillator will give me a jump start, like a car with a dead battery, to keep me going. Like that car, my battery will need to be replaced eventually.

With these enhancements, I am now a more interesting physical story in my appearance. I have a strange lump on the upper left side of my chest just below my collarbone where my ICD rests. It looks like I have a cigarette pack or a deck of cards implanted under my skin. When my three year old granddaughter sees me in a tank top, she stares at me in fascination. I don’t blame her. I probably look like some sort of scary Grandma Transformer with my super powered jet pack portruding under my skin. I have been transformed, that is true. My experience has transformed me, but not necessarily in a good way. 

I am now like my elderly mother, old before my time. We share the same cardiologist and are on the same medications. She also had a heart event. Hers was a heart attack, and mine was a heart arrest. My heart actually stopped, while hers was merely damaged by a blockage

in an artery. Luckily it was caught in time before it led to a cardiac arrest. Both of our conditions are serious. I make our cardiac appointments for the same day so we can go together. We are elderly mother-daughter heart patients. 

With our family history, my daughter, who is a mother of young children herself, looked into the genetic factor. I worry about passing down defective genes to her and my grandchildren. I undergo genetic testing. Nothing comes back as a red flag. There is no genetic or physical reason that my heart stopped, at least according to all the tests I have undergone. 

I have a cardiologist and an electrophysiologist, unlike my mother who only has a cardiologist. I am given

a simple explanation. Like a house, our hearts have both plumbing and electricity. The physical part of my house, or my plumbing, is fine. A cardiac catheterization where they look at your heart with an internal camera has found nothing physically wrong with my heart. Whatever has caused it to stop beating is apparently an electrical problem. Thus, I need both a heart plumber and an electrician. 

For some reason, my heart went out of rhythm and eventually stopped on that fateful day. Had my fellow Kim, the YMCA staff member, been one row over in the locker room, or if she had been five minutes later, I might not have made it. My cardiologist quoted me alarming statistics. Only ten percent of those who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive. Moreover, brain damage can occur after four minutes. The risk of brain damages depends on how long CPR is delayed. I was truly one of the lucky ones.

Like the football player, Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills who coincidentally suffered a cardiac arrest on the football field on live national television (Monday Night Football) exactly one day before me on January 3, I am now back in the game. I am living and breathing and walking around. My heart now beats in normal rhythm.

Ironically, we were released from the hospital on the same day. Unlike Mr. Hamlin, however, I am not actively playing a sport. I am now a benchwarmer. Although I am not forbidden from doing physical activity by my doctor, I have discontinued any sort of exercise routine. To me, the risks are just too great. Although I have always loved to swim, being back in the pool scares me. What happened to me is a real heartstopper. 

Since February is the month of love, celebrated with red and pink hearts,

I give my love and gratitude to the wonderful women who saved my life and heart that day with CPR and an AED. In the United States, it is also American Heart Month, an annual awareness campaign focused on heart health and the importance of learning CPR and having AEDs readily available.

You truly never know when something life threatening might happen. I am lucky to still be alive to tell my tale. My heart beats on.