Advocate Stories

Breanna Sudano, Maryland

On September 27, 2011, two weeks before my 14^th birthday, while playing in a field hockey game for my high school, I collapsed and went into sudden cardiac arrest.  Two coaches recognized that I was not breathing and without hesitation, immediately started CPR. 

I was also very fortunate that there were three parents at the game, who happened to be nurses, who took over performing CPR for the two coaches.  Between the five of them, they performed CPR on me for over 7 minutes until the ambulance came and used a defibrillator to administer the shock needed to reset my heart.  If not for them performing CPR, my family was told I most likely would not have survived and that because the coaches started CPR immediately, I suffered no brain or organ damage. 

These five women will forever be my heroes.  Because of them, I am one of the fortunate ones who fall into the eight percent of people who survive a sudden cardiac arrest event outside of the hospital.  I was diagnosed with an anomalous coronary artery, which is a congenital birth defect and underwent open heart surgery.  That's my cardiologist, Dr Gaskin, with me in the picture below.  Without detection of this defect, it was inevitable that at some point in my life, I was going to suffer a sudden cardiac arrest event. 

Since then, I’ve been able to participate in You’re the Cure to help encourage legislators to support more people learning CPR.  I’m especially interested in the bill to train students in CPR before they graduate from high school.  Our community needs as many CPR-trained people as we can get! 

I was very lucky that when this did happen, there were five people trained in CPR who saved my life.  Through this life changing experience, I have learned that life is truly a blessing and to appreciate every single minute.  Not everyone will be as lucky as I was.  If more people were trained in CPR, the survival rate for sudden cardiac arrest would increase and more lives would be saved.

 

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Paula and Ella Marie Hatten West Virginia

On May 6, 2011, our beautiful daughter, Ella Marie, was born. On May 7th, we found out Ella Marie was among the 1 in 100 children born with a congenital heart defect. Ella's CHD is called Tetralogy of Fallot and required her to have open heart surgery at 8 weeks old. She also will need more corrective surgeries in the future.

Of all the worries that new parents have, our daughter having a CHD was not even on our radar. We had never heard of Tetralogy of Fallot or any other CHD for that matter. We did not know any warning signs to look for or any questions to ask our doctor. Our goal as a family is to raise more awareness of congenital heart defects.

We were very happy about Corbin's Bill passing and West Virginia being one of the first states that will now require Pulse Ox to be included in newborn screenings. Our family and friends participated in the Charleston American Heart Walk on September 8th in honor of Ella and hope to do much more to raise awareness for Ella and her other heart warriors!

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Lisa Hamrick West Virginia

I remember riding with my parents and sisters in our station wagon as we made our way to my grandparents' house in Euclid, Ohio. I was going to be entering the Cleveland Clinic in a few days for heart surgery. We were fortunate that my Mom's parents lived so close to the Clinic. I was 19 years old at the time and had just completed my junior year of college--it was the summer of 1983.

I had what I would call the typical childhood growing up in the 1970s. I remember playing outside for hours and riding our bikes all over the neighborhood. And who could forget those pogo sticks we all had to have? I don't remember when I started experiencing issues with my heart, only that in junior high I passed out during a choir concert.  I recall being told not to stand with your knees locked.

I graduated from high school and began my college life at Alderson-Broaddus College. I began feeling very tired all the time so my Dad got an appointment for me with his cardiologist. You see, Dad has lived with heart disease his entire adult life. Dad's cardiologist examined me and did an echocardiogram in his office and could tell right away what my problem was. I had patent ductus arteriosus.  PDA is a condition in which a blood vessel, called the ductus arteriosus, fails to close normally in an infant soon after birth. This condition leads to heart murmur, as well as abnormal blood flow between the aorta and pulmonary artery. The doctor said my heart was working harder than it should due to the abnormal blood flow. I had been living with this problem since birth! At that time, no one in WV was performing surgical repair of PDA in adults, so my journey to Cleveland began.

I realize now that I was fortunate to survive with the condition undetected for so long. The surgery went well and I spent a few weeks at my grandparents' house recuperating. That was almost 30 years ago.

I tell my story in hopes of raising awareness in women that heart disease is not just a man's disease. We as women are the caretakers and superwomen who do it all at home and at work and we tend  to put ourselves last. You must take care of your heart so you will be around to receive all that love you give brought back to you!

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