I've lost several family members to heart disease and am lucky enough to still have others with me. I was diagnosed in 2004 with ventricular tachycardia, cardiomyopathy, and congestive heart failure; my first ICD was implanted. I was later diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in 2013.
My story is best told in my mother's words below:
April 29th, 2004
Something was wrong. I was at the clinic with my daughter, waiting for her recovery from a simple out-patient sinus surgery. I watched as other patients came and went. A nurse finally appeared and escorted me into a conference room, where the doctor told me that they could not stabilize her heart. My face went white. Her brother had died from a heart attack when he was 18, and her father had a fatal heart attack when she was 7. They called an ambulance. A cardiologist examined her in the ER, and she was admitted to the cardiac floor for a battery of heart tests.
They scheduled a different test for each day; chemical stress test, heart catherization, echocardiogram, and an electrophysiology (EP) study. An EP study is a test that records the electrical activity and the electrical pathways of the heart, in order to determine the best treatment for an abnormal heart rhythm. For reasons unknown, the electrophysiogram was rescheduled to Thursday, April 29th.
The EP study typically takes 4 – 6 hours. Simply put, the patient is sedated, hooked to monitors, an electric wire is threaded through the groin artery into the heart, and electric currents are sent to induce arrhythmias. I settled in the surgery waiting room with a book, expecting a long procedure. Much to my surprise, she was wheeled past me to the recovery room after 20 minutes, with a frightened look on her face. The doctor came in and said "she would need some hand-holding" because her heart had stopped on the table, and she had to be revived.
I looked at the clock. It was 1 p.m., Thursday, April 29th, 2004, and we were in Indiana, unexpectedly. We were not supposed to be in Indiana on that day, at that time.
Thursday, April 29th, 1993, at 1 p.m. is the also the day that her brother died, in Indiana. He was not supposed to be in Indiana on that day, either, but took a wrong turn and was lost. He had Sudden Cardiac Arrest while driving my car and died. The doctor got the chills when I told him that both of my children died on the same day of the week, the same month, the same time of day, and neither of them were expected to be in Indiana. I even had his death certificate faxed to the hospital.
Thanks to advances in medical research, my Amanda is alive! She left the hospital after 6 days with an ICD, (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator), and a future. If only an ICD had been available in 1993, both of my children would still be alive.