survived a cardiac arrest

[ThisCosyWasp]

there seems to be a lack of understanding , even in the medical fields .
i had a out of hospital cardiac arrest and had less than a 1 percent chance of survival .
i hope to bring awareness to it .

@ThisCosyWasp can you remember anything about it ?

What do you mean by there’s a lack of understanding in the medical fields?

Who resuscitated you?
How fast was the resuscitation response?

You seem aware of survival rates, can you explain why survival is so very poor from out of hospital cardiac arrest.

And can you explain a bit more about what you mean by “lack of awareness within the medical profession “?

Understanding

Is a cardiac arrest a heart attack?

Are you going to tell us you did the scam coughing thing that went around fbook a while back?

No a cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating and a heart attack is a blockage with blood flow

Had you had any previous heart problems? How old are you?

So glad you made it. How long ago did this happen to you ?

Do you know what caused it

how did you survive against the odds?

What symptoms did you have?

no question just placemarking

My dgf collapsed at home when he was in his 70s and when the ambulance arrived he was in cardiac arrest. They managed to get his heart restarted, he had emergency surgery and then was put into an induced coma. It was about 2 weeks before they attempted to take him out of the coma, and he didn't get home until about 2 months later. He never resumed bladder control (had to have a catheter) and his memory and temperament were affected by the loss of oxygen. He got a pacemaker inserted just before he left hospital, and had two further cardiac arrests, which we all thought we were just faints, as he came around very quickly, obviously the pacemaker had done it's job but he got phonecalls from the consultant to say the pacemaker software (?) had alerted that he's gone into CA.

nothing really . fit healthy dont smoke . my feet used to look purple and looing back on pictures i looked puffy , which was my heart failing. my blood pressure had always been low and no issues with cholestral . i just got up one morning at home and collapsed ,fitted (Apparently ) thankfully i wasnt alone so cpr wasnt alone and started within 4 minutes .
lots of people think its the same as a heart attack . heart attack you have much better chance .
it was just a normal morning.

im sorry to hear the problems he had . i now have an internal defib and pace maker . yes they are amazing technology . i have weakness down my left hand sand and memory loss . iv started coming on here to help my hand - hence the spelling mistakes . i get lost alot and sometimes fall but physically im fairly good . i wish your family all the best x

How sudden/unexpected was it? Did you feel unwell/have pain prior?

i really dont know
husband was there so cpr done immediatley , broke most my ribs and ripped sternum .
ambulance arrived fast and shocked me 6 times and drillled through my leg as my veins had collapsed
then in hospital they put me under theraputic hyperthermia , they had already said my brain scans were bad and family we warned i would be unkikely to be me.
i dont know ? a mix of luck / timely medical intervention and fate i guess.
when i have a bad day i always joke with friends that iv had worse days . long brutal recovery . i had a &e consultant come to see me as he really hadnt thought i would live the night . he lifted my eye lids up and shone a torch .i heard him and someone else talking but they thought i was still unconcious . but he said something about pupils responding and was clearly pleased .i heard alot of conversations but was in and out of it . i was put in a medical coma at one point so everything is a blur

Thank you so much, same to you Despite it sounding quite glum he did remarkably well, in the first few days there was very little hope for him, so the fact he got a second chance at life was brilliant. He went back to driving and onto the golf course (that is where he arrested the two subsequent times) but had to stop driving for 6 months each time he arrested, and that pained him greatly.

i got up for the loo , no pain at all . it was extremely unexpected . when i came round i had a 30 seconnd memory and struggled to understand why i was in hospital , why my kids were there and why my brother (whos a ward dr) was telling my husband see you did enough this is the best possible outcome.
i was very stressed but i was a time bomb waiting to happen . im just lucky i wasnt alone .i came round briefly and they got my heart beating alone after 28 minutes . they told my husband to say bye and he followed in the next ambulance. in a debrief we were told a out of hospital arrest often means another to follow . thankfully i didnt have another .
my heat beats the wrong way ( there is a name i cant remember ) i found walking up hillls hard but i just thought i just wasnt fit enough

Solidarity fist bump, OP. Me too. Four years ago. Mine was caused by a SCAD heart attack- artery randomly tore/dissected, boom. Full blockage. Then arrested. 15 minutes resus/shocks/the works. And well, here we both are. Raising a glass to you, soul sister.

My question is, was it a big Aha! Life changing moment for you, like, 'life before and life after'? This may seem to some like a silly question but having been through it, I just wondered what your perspective of being alive is like, as in being alive now as a survivor who knows, more than most, that we really are here by a thread.

Second question: Did you go anywhere, have visions, out of body, anything like that?

some medical staff use it interchangeably with heart attack and its very different . they have been fab but many say oh do you have to change your diet etc . its normally when i have scans but iv also had 4 different medical staff say they havent met anyone whos survied and been out so long . so i think its rare where as heart attack is much more common.
my gp is lovely but openly says they havent supported anyone in the community .
its not out of bad care , its just you dont come across it .
i also have brain damage because of it and had a dr thinking i was drunk as was slurring . its just uncommon to survive i guess

I too dealt with the lack of clinicians' understanding, OP. High cholesterol, heart disease, the typical pathology that causes heart attacks and arrests, were not there. Yet, I was medicated for months as if I were a textbook heart disease patient. Despite having incredibly low BP, I was put on BP lowering medication. Despite my cholesterol numbers being extremely good, I was put on a statin. I was put on 8 medications.

Sorry to jump in and take over, but I really empathise with the OP on the tunnel vision approach to atypical heart attacks/arrests. Sometimes, as in my case, there is no good reason for it. And so clinicians follow the protocols they know and trust, but those protocols are not a one size fits all approach.

These days, I just take a beta blocker to keep the arrhythmia at bay.
Are you on one too, OP?

hey ! well done . glad to be in the alive team ! mine was last year so early days .my heart beated the wrong way (cant remember the term ) i had no blockages tho.electrics just stopped in my heart.
we are all just walking each other home , i dont let things bother me now as i used to. on a bad day i think well i havent died today.
what about you how are you ? i hope to go back to work but couldnt at the moment

second yes i did . my nan who i was very close to was just stood in the door way watching me .i think she was waiting to take me with her as i was so ill. a friend had died a few months before and he was screaming at me and that it was selfish go back . he talked about the baby ,i thought he meant my kids (have a big age gap)i later found out my oldest is expecting !
i dont know that i believe in god but there is more to just us . i wish you all the very best and im so glad you survived xx