I saw this picture on Facebook the other day and it made me think about myself. This is just the reason why I went back to the blue light family and into EMS

Not just once, but many times, I was that patient. Many of you may already know my story, if so you can stop reading now… but this little picture told me to write here why I do what I do.

It started in September 2017. I was home in my cottage after a normal day of work. I was talking to a friend of the phone whom lived at the time in Alaska. Suddenly I started to feel funny. I got dizzy. Really dizzy. Even my friend could hear that something wasn’t right. She heard a thud and I stopped talking to her. It all went so fast for me and I just remember talking to her on the phone. My next memory is from the hospital. Everything in between there I’ve been told from my friend, the people on scene and doctors.

My friend didn’t know my address to where I lived. She knew I didn’t live inside the Canton city limits and she knew that I have had intruders in my house stealing my fridge and that I made a police report. So she googles what county I am in and calls the sheriffs department. She tells it as it is and the kind dispatcher looks up my name inhouse and get an address. They send a deputy out to the house and he finds me on the floor. At that point I am still breathing but very slow. EMS is enroute. Suddenly he can’t find a pulse and I am not breathing anymore. This deputy had just taken a CPR class a month prior and realized that this ain’t good. Started compressions. EMS came and took over the care. Epi was given, compressions in progress and out of the blue my heart decided that vacation was over. I was rushed to Mother Frances in Tyler.
My first memory is basically that people are moving me, a lot of voices, bright light and pain. Did someone drive over me with a truck? That’s how my chest felt. And suddenly all the commotion in the room stopped. Everyone was looking at me. I couldn’t move. But I could breath. My heart was beating. 30 slow beats per minute. This was going to be the start of a journey that made doctors scratch their head both once and twice.
I stayed at the hospital for a week. I don’t know if there is a test that wasn’t done on me during that time. And a lot of pain management. To have chest compressions done on you is damn painful!

When I came out from the hospital it was all about going back to “normal”. I didn’t have any restrictions more than take it easy and a bunch of follow up appointments with the cardiologist. But it took a while for my heart to realize that it better keep on ticking. The reason for what happened was that my heart was bradycardic (beating too slow) and it saw no reason to keep on beating. And that was also why the Epi and compressions worked so well.
Dizziness and syncope became a new normal for me. I tried to learn how to live with my body but nothing became better. My heart was too slow, my blood pressure dropped and I passed out. And I did it more and more often. The slightest temperature change became a problem, I had to plan my showers. We tried medications to elevate my blood pressure, I was having a heart monitor for 30 days, we ran tests but nothing worked. The EMS and Sheriffs deputies knew exactly who I was, where I lived, my dogs name etc. Between October 2017 and March 2018 I was a frequent flyer. At least twice a month I was found somewhere. And here is why this picture meant something to me. As a patient and a frequent flyer I’ve heard everything that you DON’T want to hear. I’ve had crews asking me “why I am doing this all the time?” like it was my choice. But I have also had the wonderful crews who treated me with respect, didn’t see me as that annoying frequent flyer but actually tried to understand and treat what they could, and tried to make me feel better. And those are the crews I want to remember. Those are the people that inspired me, and that I remember from this rough and traumatic time.

Fast forward to March 20th of 2018. A regular follow up visit to the cardiologist in Tyler. The previous visit, 3 weeks earlier didn’t turn out as I wanted. I had a syncope right in their hallway. But that was the turning point for my doctor. He wanted to increase my dose that day to see what happened and now came the doom. We had tried for so long to avoid pacemaker but there was no return. He asked me to go down to the ER and get admitted to the hospital so he could do the surgery the following morning. So I did. While sitting in the lobby I started to make arrangements for the next week. I had meetings and events that I had to re-schedule and change but heck, I had a legit excuse. After a couple of hours the nurse came and got me and asked if I could walk. I remember that I answered yes but that was the end. Kaboom. Down I went, in the middle of the ER lobby at the hospital. No pulse, no breathing. Done. Scared the crap out of all other patients but at least the staff knew what I was there for but no one expected this. I have been told they shocked me once and gave one Epi and I came back. I wasn’t feeling as bad this time when I woke up. But it felt like I had ran a marathon race in my muscles. I didn’t stay long at the ER, they already had a room for me but they kept me in ICU over night until surgery.

Following morning, March 21st at 9am I was finally rolled in to surgery. This day is a very important day for me because it was also my late grandmother’s 90th birthday.
The surgery went really well. Already in recovery I could feel a huge difference in my body! Suddenly I had energy!

It didn’t feel like my body was fighting itself! I wasn’t dizzy! It was amazing. Was this the first day on a somewhat normal life? But as I was laying here in recovery and then on the floor I thought to myself that If I can go back to normal, and if I am able to do it and medically cleared I am going to try to go to EMT school so I can give back to people, in the way that I have gotten so much help during this time. To become a doctor or a nurse is not on my horizon but the people who helped me get to that care that I needed inspired me. So I did.

After going through a couple of months with regular syncope episodes you stop trusting your body. Now I had to learn how it worked again. How did my body react to different things? I had became used to plan my showers because I knew that for 3-4 hours afterwards I had to lay down so my body could adjust. I also started to walk more. It was important that my heart got some workout and didn’t forget what work it had to done. My pacemaker is doing the job as soon as the heart wants to beat less than 62 beats per minutes but the heart needs to be able to function when it needs to beat faster as well.

I have had the pacemaker for 2.5 years now and it is a blessing. Every day I wake up is a new beginning. The pacemaker does 80% of my heart’s job so I couldn’t live without it. I still have some episodes but it is not out of nowhere anymore. What happens is when I work out very hard and I don’t sit down right after my heart lows down stops, the blood pressure drops before my pacemaker can catch it and I go down. So now I at least know what to do and how to avoid it when I work out. We have figured out a medication that works great and I was just cleared a couple of weeks ago by my cardiologist to work EMS for another year!

So for me to be able to work EMS and give back to others in this way is an honor. I try to see the positive in each call. And I try to understand,respect and listen to the patients. I have been there. I didn’t want to be there but I didn’t have a choice. I probably see things a little different than many others in this profession due to my background but maybe that is a good thing.
I have always been very open about my health and situation. First because it might be good to know in case something happens, secondly, maybe it can be an inspiration to someone. I don’t mind answering questions about my story. There are so many more details that I haven’t written here. But this is why I do what I do, and I love it!