July 31, 2017
As a survivor of a sudden cardiac arrest, I’m a member of a group of individuals whose uniqueness is defined by beating the remarkably high odds of not surviving such an event. Since that heart-stopping day, I’ve adopted the cute conceit of telling people that I died. Left unsaid is the obvious; that I came back from that place or state and am alive to talk about it. Here’s my confession: I know that it isn’t true that I died. Although I was pronounced “vital signs absent” (or VSA) because I had no detectable heart beat or respiration, or any discernible response to external stimuli, my brain continued to function with the limited oxygen in its cells and was sustained by the oxygenated blood pushed through my arteries by the CPR of bystanders and the medical personnel who arrived shortly thereafter. Dying, yes, but not quite dead, and then resuscitated.
I do realize I wasn’t dead but it did make for a compelling headline and dramatic tale. In addition to telling the story innumerable times, which has become easier to narrate the further away in time I am from that eventful day, I’ve written two newspaper articles, both stating that I died. And no one has yet challenged that assertion. That’s no surprise I suppose; after hearing the traumatic story of how my heart stopped pumping during a half-marathon and the valiant efforts taken to save my life, who’s going to say: “Nah, you weren’t really dead, were you, because you were able to be revived!” No one has ever said it, but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking it. Or wondering if others are.
This story I told of my death started to bother me. It felt like an untruth or exaggeration. I justified it by believing it was easier to simply say I died, rather than explaining the complicated history of how the medical and legal communities struggled for decades over a practical definition of what constitutes the determination of death. It was just short-hand, after all, for what really happened. Besides, for many people, when the heart stops pumping and the lungs respiring, that’s death. Perhaps my claiming that I died was a harmless affectation, or just a little white lie, but I wondered if maybe it was my attempt at self-aggrandizement. Like my ego had become so needy that I needed to have died (as if avoiding death with the meagre 5% probability of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest just wasn’t enough). After a few years, I began to wonder how I got from being embarrassed to have had this happen to me, to this need to embellish the story to compensate for my feelings of failure and shame.
Compounding the discomfort, my spouse once suggested we should celebrate my re-birth or, as it’s called, re-birthday — the day I was re-born after dying from the arrest. I understand that she wants to celebrate, in a thanksgiving way, and not mark my literal re-birth but I’m frankly very sheepish about acknowledging this re-birthday idea. My reluctance is based not only because it would serve to rub my nose in my own tall tale, but also out of respect for the most famous re-birthday subject celebrated around the world on Easter. I’m not even remotely in that category of worthiness and I feel my story diminishes his. But mostly I eschew the re-birthday idea because what happened on November 3rd still doesn’t feel to me like it’s anything to celebrate
I didn’t die that day but something did. Yes, I survived, yet the person who awoke in hospital from a coma wasn’t the same person who collapsed and lost consciousness two days earlier. As I discover more about who I now am, I’m forgetting what he was like. I’m becoming a memory.
And I’ve noticed that something else is slowly passing away. I’m spending less time trying to figure out what exactly was lost that November day and whether, and how, I can resuscitate it. Whether a consequence of oxygen deprivation on the brain or simply a part of being alive in this fast-paced world, I get distracted when ruminating about the past. Life is distracting me and, with the passage of time, the once-strong emotional grip of the cardiac arrest is ebbing. More often now, I can go days without thinking about the event and the impact it had. I look forward to when November 3rd passes unnoticed. I’ll celebrate the following morning, if I remember.
As for my story about how I died and lived to talk about it, it’s just a story. Whether I died or not doesn’t matter anymore to me. It’s not important. It’s not going to be my last, or only, story.