Barbara Copeland, Pasadena, MD – 37 at time of event (1998)
Ten years ago, Barbara Copeland had a secret. It was so secret that not even she knew it. Her father may have, but he passed in the 1980s. Her first indication was an erratic heartbeat. The doctor told her she was suffering anxiety and to take some prescription pills. So she did, for several months.
But, the secret was getting dangerously close, and reappeared on her 37th birthday. She didn’t feel like eating cake that day. She felt as weary as Olivia, her two-year-old that she’d just put to bed. She told her husband that she “wasn’t feeling quite right,” and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Her husband had been a college lifeguard, and his training from so long ago probably saved Barbara’s life. He called 9-1-1 and started CPR. The EMTs arrived in eight minutes and shocked her back into rhythm. She spent a week in ICU; sedated or coma, she has no memory of it. In total, three weeks are missing from her life, although she has a permanent reminder now.
An ICD was the solution, but what was the prognosis? How could a superbly fit aerobics instructor in her thirties with no health issues be so vulnerable? What impact would it have on her marriage, and her daughter? And, why couldn’t their family doctor identify her secret? Her father had died from “a massive heart attack,” which is often a euphemism for sudden cardiac arrest. Barbara’s collapse was the definitive clue. A specialist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital eventually found the disturbing trait, genetic Long QT3*. It is deadly, and Olivia has it, too. So do several other family members. Some are protected by ICDs. Some are not.
Barbara feels “blessed that God saved me. He gave me a second chance.” And she has taken it to heart, literally. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” is not a cliché to her. She has now reprioritized her life, focusing on the important things like family, and moved back to her home state, close to Johns Hopkins.
Her ordeal is not over, and probably never will be. One day in 2003 she was in a meeting, when someone’s cell phone beeped annoyingly. “Who’s beeping?” she asked. Her boss leaned over and said, “It’s you!” This was just another little reminder that she had a condition that required an ICD, and it was time for it to be replaced. The new device parameters were not set correctly, however, and she received the “therapy” multiple times while in step class, at the gym. “It really hurt. And it kept shocking me,” Barbara told me. “I lay down, hoping to calm my heartbeat, but the shocks had raised my adrenaline levels!”
A while back Barbara suffered a bout of depression, and it prompted her to embrace life, not reject it. She has had that second chance, and wants to take advantage of it, although she recognizes that maybe now she shouldn’t go skydiving!
Every morning Barbara wakes and says to herself, “Thank God I have another day to enjoy.”
* [Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a disorder of the heart's electrical activity that can cause a sudden, uncontrollable, and dangerous heart rhythm. With LQTS 1 & 2, stress, exercise or sudden surprise/fright can trigger the arrhythmia. In LQTS 3, a low heart rate during sleep may be the trigger.]
-Jeremy Whitehead