This is the story of the day I almost died, and how I’m so grateful today to be writing about the event instead.
I’m a 49 year old Dad, IT professional and athlete, living in Tampa Bay, Florida. I’ve generally been healthy all my life, and as written about in my health test, I thought I was doing well.
In July 2023 we came to Helsinki, Finland to spend our vacation, to visit our family and friends. We had Penny & Liam with us, and every-one was excited about visiting Finland/Sweden and in general spend time with family & friends.
On Wednesday July 26th, we spent the day doing sauna, cold water swimming and eating Nepalese food. On Thursday July 27th 2023 – we’d decided with Sam and Liam to go jogging/ workout, so I woke up the boys and we headed out after having a small glass of water to drink.
I felt fine, except some carby bloat from the Nepalese food. Otherwise I was in excellent shape for a 49-year old (or so I thought). We jogged down the slope to Mannerheimintie, I suddenly started feeling unwell and passed out. This has been told to me later:
EVENT
Sam notices me collapse on the ground, panics and then quickly alerts a bystander to call an ambulance. He tells Liam to run to get everyone else.
I’ve been hit with ventricular fibrillation, which reduces the heart to a quivering mass of jelly, unable to pump blood. VF leads to Sudden Cardiac Death, with a mortality rate of 95% after 15 min without resuscitation. As I’m convulsing on the ground, start foaming from the mouth, Sam and the bystander start to perform CPR/ chest compressions. Minutes tick by like an eternity.
The ambulance arrives, and the Emergency medics rush to the scene. They assess the situation and give an electric shock which resets the electrical circuits in the heart. I’d spent about 10 minutes in V-Fib. I’m rushed to the hospital, in a state of shock and confusion. After a couple of hours my state is better, the confusion is lifting, and I’m able to see my family again. I spend 24h in the Cardiac Intensive Care unit, unable to sleep with the noise and beeping around me. I feel scared and anxious as I’m not sure if I will wake up if I fall asleep.
AFTER
The evening of the event the cardiac surgeon performed an angiogram, and found only mild changes related to coronary artery disease, but nothing that would explain the cardiac event.
An MRI was performed on Monday July 31st – with no indications of root cause. On Wednesday August 2nd, a electro- physiological stress test was performed on my heart – also here the heart performed well. This test though is no walk in the park – as you are given electrical shocks and chemicals to your heart, and it feels as if you are relieving the event all over again.
I was also given a neuro-psychiatric evaluation, and thankfully no loss of function/memory/ability was found.
Finally on Thursday August 3rd, an ICD (Intra Cardiac Defibrillator) was operated into my chest. The ICD monitors the heart rate, and in case the heart goes into fibrillation again, the ICD can give an electric shock to reset the heart. I was shell-shocked, very raw emotionally, but at the same time so grateful to Sam, to my family, to the first responders etc.
There are many lessons, and a journey to recovery from this, that I’ll write about in the next post.