The Day I Died

Don’t be fooled… this is me, clowning around and taking a selfie while strapped to a stretcher in the back of an ambulance.

Three years ago today I died. And remembering my own death has me feeling very weird.

It was a warm Saturday morning, Derek was reading the news in bed with the dogs, and I was up and at ‘em fairly early because I needed to catch the boat to Seattle for a rehearsal for “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” a musical in which I was cast. At 51 years old I had already figured out that I no longer looked beachy and cute when leaving the house without make-up and as the oldest member of the cast, one of the only members not pursuing theatre in a big way, and one of the few locals in the production, I was already having a tough time fitting in. So yes, a full face of makeup and perfect hair were a necessity.

After applying my make-up and diffusing my curls while doing a vocal warm-up, I stood up from my vanity and walked over to the sink to apply some non-frizz hair goop and to brush my teeth. As I walked the six steps to the the bathroom counter, I became aware that I was a little lightheaded, but it wasn’t unusual. My blood pressure had been pretty low for a long time and sometimes this meant that I “got up too fast” and dealt with dizziness. When you’re used to charging inexorably forward through your chronic illness (for me that was heart failure caused by non-compaction left-ventricular cardiomyopathy), you very often forget to alter your behavior. It’s one of the ways you kid yourself that you’re normal, just like everyone else.

By the time I reached the counter, I was aware that this time the lightheadedness was different. Quite suddenly my peripheral vision went black on the left and the right and then those two sides rushed towards each other to meet in the middle, like someone closing a curtain. I remember gripping the bathroom counter tightly, saying “Oh my God, oh my God” and then the world ended.

When I regained consciousness, I couldn’t see Derek but I could hear him talking to someone nearby. I had no idea where I was, but it was clear that he sounded concerned. I struggled to make sense of what was happening and to pull my vision back front and center (my eyes were rolling in my head, although I didn’t know it). I heard the strange female voice tell Derek to get me a pillow and for a few seconds I was alone on the bathroom floor while he retrieved it.

By the time he returned, my vision was back. He kept telling me to lie still and began explaining to me that I had collapsed. He told me he was on the phone with 911 and that an ambulance was coming.

But listen friends, I wasn’t having any of that. I told Derek that I felt fine, aside from my head (I clipped our glass bathroom scale with the back of my skull when I collapsed). I started trying to get up because I had a rehearsal to get to and I already felt like my castmates thought I didn’t belong and that the director was having second thoughts about casting me and I wanted to fight like hell for my spot in the show.

I didn’t have the words to express all of this, of course, so all I did was try to sit up. He gently pushed me back down and told me I needed to wait for the EMTs, who where on their way. So I did as I was told and tried to put together a strategy in which I appeased Derek, sent the EMTs away and made it to rehearsal… and I knew at the very least that I was going to be late.

“Can you please call Deirdre and let her know I’m going to be late?” (Deirdre is both my friend and the production manager at the theater and she’s incredibly good at her job. When working on a show, I both love and fear her.)

Derek told me I was being ridiculous, but I kept pressing him on the matter and so he relented and called Deirdre to apprise her of the situation. She, of course, was both understanding and concerned. And with that out of the way, I turned my attention to the fact that the EMTs were on their way and I still needed to brush my teeth.

I once again tried to get up so I could remedy this but Derek would not allow it. And before I could mount a good offense, my bathroom was suddenly full of cute firemen.

Vitals were taken, questions were asked, both the incident and my medical history were recounted in detail and I had to force myself not to writhe in embarrassment at being bra-less and in my pajamas with morning breath around all of these attractive strangers. The EMTs recommended I be taken to the ER.

Nope nope nope NOPE! I wasn’t having that either! I told them that this was ridiculous, that I had low blood pressure and simply stood up too fast. They asked me if my defibrillator had shocked me and I told them no. It never even occurred to me that it might have gone off because it had shocked me once before and I knew exactly how awful it felt.

They kept pushing and at Derek’s insistence, I grudgingly agreed to be taken to the hospital— only out of an abundance of caution due to my medical history. I thought everyone was being silly, never actually realizing that I was the silly one.

With my concession, the EMTs swung into action. They placed me in a cervical collar and although I was expecting to climb onto a stretcher, instead they loaded me into a large duffel bag. Yes, a large duffel bag with multiple handles! As they carried me down my stairs (two men on each side of the duffel) I heard myself apologizing for being so heavy and I distinctly remember thinking “Oh my God, this is just like ‘My 600 Pound Life’“ because why wouldn’t I take a moment to publicly and privately criticize my weight and physical appearance in the middle of a health emergency?

Then we were in the ambulance traveling from Poulsbo to the emergency room in Silverdale. Because I’m me, I of course turned the whole ride into a one-woman show for the benefit of the two firemen who rode in back with me. I don’t know how to act in these situations and generally rely on humor to get me through and this was no different.

I was so confident that everyone was overreacting, I took photos of the firemen IN the ambulance!

Once I was safely ensconced in an exam room in the ER, the attending physician decided it would be prudent to determine if my defibrillator had fired, despite my repeated insistence that it had not. Unfortunately, the ER itself did not have the appropriate personnel or equipment to do this, so a Medtronic rep had to be called in . And since it was a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon, it took her roughly four hours to reach the hospital. While we waited, Derek felt comfortable enough to go pick up some lunch and I happily crunched my way through some chips and guacamole, content in my certainty that everything was fine, everyone had overreacted, and I had missed rehearsal for no reason at all.

But once the rep arrived and interrogated my device, we learned the truth. I hadn’t just “fainted” from low blood pressure. My heart had experienced roughly 30 seconds of ventricular flutter* where it wasn’t really pumping in any normal sense but it also hadn’t actually stopped. Because my brain wasn’t receiving any oxygenated blood, I eventually collapsed. And at some point between losing consciousness and Derek reaching the bathroom to find me on the floor, my defibrillator fired and shocked my heart back into a normal rhythm and me back to life. Because it happened while I was unconscious, I did not feel it.

Once the attending realized what had actually happened, she decided to admit me. This required me being taken by ambulance to a different hospital with an ICU (in the event my condition worsened). The small rural hospital I’d been taken to had no such facilities. And still I didn’t understand the enormity of what had happened.

I spent one night in the hospital for observation. The attending cardiologist was pleased that I had stabilized and told me I needed to see my regular cardiologist as soon as possible, so I called and left a message for Dr. Woo for a follow-up appointment. My nurse was a beautiful and really sweet woman named Jennifer. We spent a lot of time talking about the show, the rehearsal I missed, and how much I enjoyed performing. I told her about the strenuous dancing we were doing, about the struggle I was having catching my breath while trying to dance and sing at the same time, but that I was still getting it done and was really hoping I’d be medically cleared to continue with the show. I remember the soft way that she looked at me and how strange it felt for her to tell me how “inspiring” I was. I was just a normal person leading a normal life!

I still had no idea how sick I was. I didn’t know I was only getting 30% of the oxygen that normal people were getting. I didn’t know that I had hit end-stage heart failure. I just kept pushing through because it’s what I always do. So two days later I returned to both my day job and to rehearsals for the show. Publicly I shrugged it off as just another “episode” and something else I had triumphed over. Two months later I sang and danced my way through the 3-week run of “Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert,” ending each performance by singing “I Will Survive” through tears.

I was unwittingly defying death and at the very beginning of the very end. As I view this particular day through my rear view mirror, three years and one heart transplant later, it makes me feel very strange indeed.

*”Ventricular flutter” is an arrhythmia, more specifically a tachycardia affecting the ventricles with a rate over 250-350 beats/min, and one of the most indiscernible. It is a critically unstable arrhythmia that can result in sudden cardiac death. Without my defibrillator, I would have stayed dead.