Doctors Pronounced Me Dead

Twenty years ago on this date

(Picture of the IV tree next to my bed in ICU)

May 22, 2024, marks twenty years since my heart stopped and doctors called my time of death.

You might guess that it didn’t remain stopped, and you are correct.  After the doctor left to announce my passing to friends and family gathered in the waiting room, the monitor beeped as my heart resumed beating in a disorganized rhythm.  They were able to shock me back into a normal sinus rhythm and placed a temporary pacemaker to keep my heart beating until they could implant a permanent one.

Recovery was slow and painful.  This was my third code in as many weeks, and a stroke muddied the waters as I learned how to speak, swallow, and walk again.  After weeks of intensive therapy, I went home with a feeding tube inserted into my gut, speaking in a whisper and walking with a cane.

At the time, I thought this was the end of a brief but dramatic journey that began in December of the previous year when my congenital heart defect tipped over the edge into heart failure. Instead, it was only the beginning of a journey of survival that has lasted two decades.

When I first received the heart failure diagnosis, my hometown cardiologist told me, “There is nothing more we can do for you.”  Leaving me to live or die on my own. 

I chose to live, and I landed in this hospital just 24 hours before my first code.  Despite staggering odds, the medical team worked to revive me each time, bringing me back from the brink of death to continue my fight.

A year and half after that fateful night, I returned to the same hospital and the same ICU.  This time I waited for a lifesaving heart transplant.

Twenty years later, I’m still here, beating the odds.

Sometimes, you have to fight to survive. Survival is its own reward.