A Heart-Stopping Story
2003 Boaz Rauchwerger
It was a cold and snowy January day when it happened. As he leaned down to pick something up from the floor, he noticed that his heart was racing. An hour later, it was still racing. As if someone was keeping up a relentless fast beat on a loud snare drum.
A growing pain in his chest, and some numbness in the left arm, brought enough concern to call a doctor. "Oh, it's probably nothing," said the physician. "You're 29 years old, don't smoke or drink, don't do drugs, not overweight, and you used to be an athlete in high school. However," he continued, "If you're concerned, you might go to the hospital and just check it out."
Napoleon Hill, in the book "Think and Grow Rich," said we all have a powerful sixth sense – that inner voice that guides us. He said we should all learn to listen to it. That January day, he listened.
Walking into the Emergency Room of a nearby hospital, he started feeling faint. Motioning to his heart, a nurse came over and put a stethoscope on his chest.
What happened next is just like a scene out of "ER," the television show. Except this was for real. The nurse rushed to her desk, flipped some switches, bells started ringing. She could be heard to say, "CODE BLUE, CODE BLUE!" He was going into cardiac arrest. That fast drumbeat in his chest was about to stop forever.
He was quickly ushered to a nearby bed as a number of doctors and nurses converged. The crash cart, containing the electrical defibrillator equipment, was rushed in. Seconds counted while a life was quickly slipping away.
As he lay there, and the doctor was about to hit his chest with an electric shock, he tugged at the doctor's sleeve and asked, "Doctor, am I having a heart attack so I can tell the story later?"
This was no time for common courtesies. The doctor ignored his question, hollered "CLEAR!" and touched his chest with the two electric paddles. All he could remember, before the shock, was feeling as if a freight train was coming toward him – right down the middle of his chest.
His body bounced off the table as the electricity zapped through his chest. Electrical defibrillation is a wake up call for a heart that's either stopped or out of control. If you feel as if your life is out of control, maybe this is a good moment to shock some sense into it.
A life out of control may involve habits that you know you ought to change: smoking, drinking too much, gambling excessively, infidelity, being a workaholic, obesity. Start taking small daily steps to change those habits that are detrimental to you. Do so before life jolts you to some realities.
When he woke up in his hospital room a little while later, there were questions. The leading one being: "What happened?"
The doctor came by and said, "That was a very close call. Your heart was racing out of control at 300-400 beats a minute and you were about to die. It's a good thing you came to the hospital when you did."
He explained that it was not a heart attack, but rather an electrical malfunction. They discovered a rare heart condition, an extra electrical pathway in the heart. On that day, that pathway caused a short circuit in his heart and made it race out of control. The cardiologists call that pattern a circus motion because it literally conducts electricity in a circle in the heart.
The condition itself is called Wolfe-Parkinson-White or WPW. It was there from his birth, appears in one half of one percent of the people in the world, in more men than women. If it shows up, it will usually do so before the age of 30. He was 29 at that time.
The electric shock had been administered at precisely the right second, just before massive heart damage would have occurred. He had no heart damage at all.
This incident took place in 1976. At that time there did not exist the current computer technology to map the heart and identify the location of the various electrical conduction pathways. Thus, since the extra pathway could not be seen with the naked eye (it was somewhere in the middle of the heart muscle), the doctors decided it was too dangerous to operate at that time.
The patient was prescribed Inderol and Quinidex. One is a beta blocker to keep the heart from going too fast and the other is a pacer, to make sure the heartbeats are study and regular.
You may recall the name Hank Gathers. He was a star college basketball player at Loyola Marymount University. There were predictions that he'd be a round one draft pick for the NBA. After having an episode of a fast heartbeat, he was diagnosed with WPW. The medications mentioned above were also prescribed for him.
One day, deciding the pills made him feel sluggish, he stopped taking them for a while. The next time he stepped on the basketball court, his heart started racing and he was dead within minutes.
This is your official notice. If you need to change something important in your life, this is your wakeup call. I don't want to hear a heart-stopping story about you. This one was about me.
A Daily Wakeup Affirmation
I am now paying attention to the things I need to change in my life.
Article reproduced with permission from Boaz Rauchwerger. You may reprint any of these articles in any publication or Web site so long as you credit Boaz Rauchwerger as the author and include this Web site address, www.Boazpower.com.