My SCAD Story

Where were you when it happened and what were you doing? Trauma stories start that way.  Your story starts that way too. Here's mine.

It was May 7, 2014. I was standing at the kitchen stove minding my own business and stirring a pot of chili. There were two pots. One small one for me that was not so spicy and vegetarian. One big one for Mark, my husband, and Wesley, my son, and that one was extra spicy and made with beef. 

Mark had made the 3-hour drive up to Orono, Maine the day before, stayed overnight en route, and then went on to The University of Maine to pick up Wes. Sophomore year was over and he was coming home with a heap of his dorm things.

My day at work had been a calm one. My 7th grade students had been taking standardized tests on their iPads. It had been a quiet, calm day of just overseeing the testing. We had a staff meeting in the afternoon in which I presented, something I enjoyed doing, and then I came home.

I skimmed a spoon into the big pot of chili to taste the spice level of the sauce. I don't eat beef so I was careful not to get a piece of meat. A chunk of hot pepper did make it in my mouth and began to burn. My eyes began to tear up from the spice. 

I grabbed a swig of ginger ale to wash it down and to relieve the burning. I swallowed wrong and began to cough hard and suck in air at the same time. 

A sensation that I had to burp felt caught in my chest but I could not get the burp up. The burn from the hot pepper seemed to intensify, first in my mouth and then down into my throat. I switched to drinking water because the feeling as if a trapped, carbonated burp was stuck in me kept getting worse. I began to sweat, I thought from the heat of the chili pepper.

Wes and Mark came bursting through the door talking, laughing, with armloads of boxes, a guitar, bags of laundry. I greeted them and then told them I was going to lay down because I felt weird. 

Laying down didn't help. The pressure sensation of having to burp moved to my back, between my shoulder blades. I moved around, patted my chest, the back of my shoulder. It just kept getting worse. 

I came out to the living room to tell Mark that I had this weird sensation of pressure in my chest and that maybe I should walk around our back field and try to get the burp up. My left arm began to feel like a tightened rubber band. My throat felt constricted. Should I take Benadryl? Maybe it was an allergic reaction to the pepper.

Mark looked sharply at me and said I looked gray. Wesley's eyes, when they met mine, had a seriousness in them I had never seen before. "Mom, those are symptoms of a heart attack."

My husband had keys in hand in a flash and simply said. "Get in the car." There was no hesitation. I did not say a word. I slipped my sneakers on and got in the car. 

This was all uncharacteristic of us. There was no discussion. The mood was bad film noir.  It didn't make sense. The dog hadn't been fed and the chili was still bubbling away on the stove.

It was a fast drive to the hospital -- 12 minutes if you speed, which Mark did. We walked into the emergency entrance of Maine Medical Center Center in Portland.  My legs felt wobbly but I was able to tell the young woman at the desk my symptoms. I no sooner got the words out then I was brought into a small room where my blood pressure was taken and an EKG machine was rolled in. 

A woman chatted with me a bit as she attached the EKG leads under my clothing and started the machine. I actually began to feel a little better and more calm. I laid back, looked up at the ceiling, and started talking about my son coming home from college and what a way to start his vacation and the chili and ...no answer. I sat up. She wasn't there. She had left the room with me still hooked up to the machine. How rude!

Moments later a group of doctors and nurses burst through the door and transferred me onto a stretcher and started rolling me out of the EKG room. My shirt was being pulled off. My bra! My God, my bra was being removed as we rolled! Questions were coming at me from the right. From the left I heard the words "Your EKG is showing a cardiac event." An IV was started. Someone was on the phone with cardiology. A nurse was trying to get me to take nitroglycerine and I refused. Here's where I turned into a bad patient. I became The Teacher, The Leader. The Negotiator, The Rational One.

Hold it everybody. Hold it. Put all that stuff down. You are mistaken. I am not having a cardiac event. I'm 47. My heart is fine. My cholesterol is low. I have always had a healthy diet. Don't smoke. Healthy weight. I'm fine. Give me my bra back. I'm going home. 

There's more. Apparently, I am told, I got a bit oppositional and tried to get them to treat my husband instead, the one whose cholesterol scores are off the chart, the one who refuses to take medication to lower it. I don't remember that part, but I do remember a very skilled young cardiologist who took me by the hand and said very gently, "I can tell you are used to being in charge, but this is one time you need to turn it over to us. You are most definitely having a serious cardiac event and we need to take care of you. I'd like to give you something to relax. May I?" 

Well, what do you say to that? There is no choice but to say, "Yes, please."

Enter my two best friends at that moment: Ativan and Versed.  I remember little after that but peace, rainbows, and random bits of reality. 

I remember the cath lab tech talking in my ear about middle-aged women and menopause and explaining artery dissection. I told him I thought he might be on to something there.

I remember looking at a screen and marveling as the dye moved through my arteries and revealed a network that looked like the branches of a tree.

I remember a surgeon telling me I was in good hands and not to worry. Groovy.

I remember feeling God and complete safety and love beaming off of everyone and everything around me and I sunk into that feeling of warmth and security and stayed there until I woke up to a woman with a brown pony tail hovering over me. I was in ICU.

I felt a catheter. I felt tubes coming from my abdomen. There were lines everywhere coming from my body and going into a tower of technology. I faded in and out.

The ICU nurse cared for me like a newborn baby. She talked to me and explained my surgery as she changed lines, cleaned me, gave me sips of water.

My family came and went, as did my drowsiness. The next day I was rolled into a regular room. Soon my surgeon, Dr. Quinn, appeared from around the corner with a big smile on his face,"We fixed you!" 

Dr. Quinn explained what spontaneous coronary artery dissection was and described how lucky I was that my husband got me to the hospital so quickly. In the cath lab they had discovered that more than half of my LAD (left anterior descending) artery has dissected in a spiral fashion and it had caused a STEMI ( the most lethal type of heart attack). It meant I had to be brought in immediately for a bypass to save my heart muscle from dying. 

Dr. Quinn shook my hand and said I did great and I should now be fine.  He was so confident and kind that I believed him.  Turns out he was right. 

During the three days I was in the hospital, I made quick progress. I never had any serious pain. My sternum was sore and my entire torso ached as if I had strained muscles but it was never harsh pain. 

When I walked it was slow going - up and down the hall, then around the wing -- at first hunched forward and clinging to my IV pole, out of breath. Later I was able to stand up straight and walk more normally. 

When I came home, it felt as if I had been away for a year, had been on an odyssey of sorts. Someone had turned off the chili and cleaned up the kitchen. Someone had fed the dog. A sub had been called in to take over my classroom through the end of the year and my principal had sent flowers and told me not to worry. My only job was to heal.

I did. The physical healing was rapid. The scar down the center of my chest knit together quickly into a white line. There were lots of naps the first weeks and home visits from a nurse. I kept track of the medications I was sent home with. I took walks in our back field, then walks on a level hiking trail down the road from my house, and eventually completed a  cardiac rehab program. My medication was reduced to just 12.5 mg. of metoprolol and 81 mg. of aspirin, which I still take two years later. 

All of the physical progress in healing was mixed in with a constant cycle of fear and meditating or journaling to process it. I began reading as much as I could find about SCAD, found online support, and connected with SCAD specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

My formula worked. And it is with deep gratitude that I feel healthy today.