Spring Break
Student reflects on life after nearly dying on operating table
Joe LaBarbera
Issue date: 12/12/07 Section: Opinion
I remember exactly where I was on August 30, 1983 at 2:32 a.m. I was at the Kennnedy Space Center in Florida reporting on the first night launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger for WEMP Radio news. I was heading into my senior year at Whitewater that summer. I spent my days that fall handling 20 and 21 credits during my two final semesters at Whitewater, my early evenings doing sports on WSUW radio and Cable 19 (then Cable 6) and my nights working third shift at WEMP in Milwaukee.
I was working my radio job on January 26, 1986 in Milwaukee when the Challenger exploded moments after takeoff from Kennedy Space Center. Nobody who boarded the shuttle expected that day to be there last on earth. The younger you are the more likely you are to believe death is something that happens only to old people. That's what I thought until it hit close to home. It was then I realized just how fragile life is.
I was in a hospital hooked up to an EKG monitor on September 18, 2002 when my heart stopped beating. It was a scramble for the crash cart. Inject me with atropine. Begin CPR. A few minutes later I was up and running again. I was 40 years old and apparently going to see 41. The nurse who wheeled me down the hallway told me I gave them quite a scare. I couldn't remember much, and didn't believe I actually came that close to not being able to answer the phone anymore, so I asked that nurse for proof. I spent the next 30 hours hooked up to every kind of wire you can think of with continuous monitoring in the heart ward and had quickly forgotten my request.
About a week later an envelope came in the mail with no return address. When I opened it, I couldn't believe what I saw. Everything to do with my heart stopping episode was right in front of me, including the EKG. It showed my flatline. I had gone into full arrest. The technical term was asystole. I never heard of asystole, but since it almost ended my life I thought I better find out what it is. The easiest way to describe it is an absence of electrical activity to the heart. I did a little primitive research and discovered that 15 percent of patients who experienced asystole in a hospital survived to discharge. In other words, 85 percent of the people in my shoes (or bed I guess) never made it to their car for the ride home.
I was working my radio job on January 26, 1986 in Milwaukee when the Challenger exploded moments after takeoff from Kennedy Space Center. Nobody who boarded the shuttle expected that day to be there last on earth. The younger you are the more likely you are to believe death is something that happens only to old people. That's what I thought until it hit close to home. It was then I realized just how fragile life is.
I was in a hospital hooked up to an EKG monitor on September 18, 2002 when my heart stopped beating. It was a scramble for the crash cart. Inject me with atropine. Begin CPR. A few minutes later I was up and running again. I was 40 years old and apparently going to see 41. The nurse who wheeled me down the hallway told me I gave them quite a scare. I couldn't remember much, and didn't believe I actually came that close to not being able to answer the phone anymore, so I asked that nurse for proof. I spent the next 30 hours hooked up to every kind of wire you can think of with continuous monitoring in the heart ward and had quickly forgotten my request.
About a week later an envelope came in the mail with no return address. When I opened it, I couldn't believe what I saw. Everything to do with my heart stopping episode was right in front of me, including the EKG. It showed my flatline. I had gone into full arrest. The technical term was asystole. I never heard of asystole, but since it almost ended my life I thought I better find out what it is. The easiest way to describe it is an absence of electrical activity to the heart. I did a little primitive research and discovered that 15 percent of patients who experienced asystole in a hospital survived to discharge. In other words, 85 percent of the people in my shoes (or bed I guess) never made it to their car for the ride home.
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Lawrence A. Brown
posted 12/17/07 @ 8:27 PM CST
I can say from experience that Joe LaBarbera is absolutely right. I used to have better health; I went from being fully ambulatory to being in a power wheelchair (lifelong expectancy). (Continued…)
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