Post columnist Victoria Gotti knows what Vice President Dick Cheney is going through. In 1998, her heart went haywire, and she had to get an implantable cardioverter defibrillator like the one installed in Cheney’s chest yesterday.
I HAD no reason to think it was going to be anything but an easygoing Saturday morning, hanging out with the boys, something I’d sorely missed in the last few weeks.
I was on deadline finishing my fourth novel, and my editor and I were in a crunch. I had been putting in nights writing, not to mention 24-7 mothering. I was frazzled.
I took my three sons to their Little League games, the first of the season. The testosterone level was at an all-time high.
It was unseasonably warm for mid-April, but I broke out into a cold sweat more than once, and waves of nausea rushed through my body. I felt my heart racing – beating an unusually strong tattoo.
Suddenly, I was so weak I could barely stand.
My 14-year-old son, John, belted the ball behind third base. The crowd was on its feet. I tried to stand but a strange feeling invaded my body. I was light-headed, short of breath and trembling.
I pulled myself up, so shaky I could barely stand. The safest thing I could do was get back to my car.
I glanced over to see John rounding third base and heading for home. He looked my way. Maybe it was the terrified look in my eyes or the pale pallor of my face, but instantly his guard went up.
He shouted my name, but I had to keep walking. The last thing I heard before crumpling to the ground were my sons’ horrified screams: “Help my mom, please.”
The hospital monitors and machines closed in on me like steel bars in a maximum-security prison. Dr. Martin Handler’s voice seemed to echo from a great distance. He told me I had taken a turn for the worse.
My seemingly benign cardiac arrhythmia was now a life-threatening condition. I suffered a near-fatal episode of V-tach, a serious problem in which the heart’s electrical system goes haywire and its normal, forceful contractions are reduced to chaotic, insufficient quivering beats.
Because my heart was already damaged from a virus, the risk that I would suffer cardiac arrest – or sudden death – was extremely high.
I was prepped for surgery the next day.
The plan was to implant an automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator into my chest cavity.
It’s a tiny computer, 2 inches by 2½ inches, encased in silicone and metal. It’s attached to the heart with lead wires and electrode paddles. It can read the beats of the heart, detect any abnormality, then send shocks to return the heart to a normal rhythm.
This newly approved device provides immediate therapy. But, as I’m sure someone explained to Dick Cheney, it’s not pleasant living with a foreign object in your body. There are side effects and risks, not to mention chronic, often-debilitating chest and shoulder pain.
I was wheeled into the operation room early the next morning. Three hours later, the beeping and whirring of the cardiac monitors that once had been a major annoyance were now music to my ears.
They represented life.