33 Minutes

After my cardiac arrest I was unconscious for 33 minutes before being revived.

In that time you could watch a TV show, with minutes to spare. You could cook a quick meal. You could have a lengthy phone conversation with a dear friend. You could go for a jog, bike ride or swim. Or you could save someone's life.

I just lay there on the floor, occasionally gasping for air and then stopping, lifeless, while my husband Chris performed CPR. He dialed "000" and had the phone operator on speaker. Although he had done a first aid course a few months back, the operator guided him and offered extra support. In the meantime, our 10-month old daughter played on her play mat with her toys quietly, thinking that mum and dad were playing next to her too.

The two ambulance officers arrived, Chris ran to open the door. They continued CPR. Chris described it as a never ending passage of time. For as quickly as everything was happening, everything was simultaneously moving in slow motion.

The CPR wasn't working. It took 2 x 200J shocks and one dose of adrenaline to revive me. Then I was taken to the closest hospital.

What followed was a night of sedation, memory tests, MRI scan, chest x-rays, medication and treatment for aspiration pneumonia. The icing on the cake was the insertion of a single lead, MRI compatible Automatic Internal Cardiac Defibrillator (AICD) in my left submammary pocket.

I was in hospital for nearly two weeks. Plus six weeks recovery and R&R after the insertion of the defibrillator, so I don't unwillingly pull the leads out. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

That's the technical stuff over and done with. Now I'm at home about 3.5 weeks into that recovery period and dealing with a barrage of (sometimes random) emotions and thoughts.

The latest of which have been irrelevant, trivial details about the event. What do the ambulance officers look like? Where did they park the ambulance? Which of our neighbours in our apartment block were watching as I was carried out on a stretcher and into the ambulance? Was there a lot of traffic on the road? What route did they take to the hospital? What route would have I taken? Did Chris and Zoe ride in the ambulance with us?

Random and trivial and yet all so seemingly important in my mind. I'm not quite sure what picture I'm attempting to paint in my head. One of survival, or the adverse? If things had gone badly, what would the aftermath of my death look like?

So here we are, at the root issue: mortality.

Prior to the cardiac arrest I was terrified of death. When I came to, post the arrest, I felt somewhat comforted because I hadn't experienced any pain. I had simply slipped into an all encompassing velvety, thick, warm darkness. I figured should I be so lucky that I eventually meet my end in the same manner, I couldn't have it any better.

Even so, I now have a whole new set of questions presenting themselves. This is an area and a process I will be exploring in time to come. I did start though by watching this video on TED by Stephen Cave: The 4 stories we tell ourselves about death.

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.” - Epicurus

In other words:

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. In this sense, life has no end." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

What resonated with me is the distinction and complete separation between life and death. For some reason I could never see this previously. Once we're dead, we're dead. We don't know the difference. We ourselves do not experience the loss of our lives and ourselves, it's the people left behind that have to deal with that.

For now I will continue exploring, processing and living my life, and as Mr Cave says in his presentation, ensure to make it a "good story".