Did you know about 90% of people who experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest die. And Typically the average person who does experience cardiac arrest has about 8 minutes before it can become fatal and brain damage can happen after just 5 minutes.” Pretty scary right! Well here's my story..
It was New Years Eve, I remember feeling terrible that night and I honestly thought I just had a cold or something but as the night went on it felt that me having a cold was far from what I was experiencing. Around 1:00am I had woken my mother up and insisted she take me to the Hospital. We drove to Howard County General Hospital and waited to be seen! As I was sitting down in the waiting room I felt more and more weak inside. Once we were seen by the doctor moments later they had informed my Mother and I that something about my Heart looked and sounded very abnormal to them and Insisted that I be seen by the cardiac unit at JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL! They must have saw something we didn’t because before I knew it I was in a helicopter being flown to the ICCU at Johns Hopkins. When I got there I was surrounded by a group of doctors in all white coats and was monitored for the next couple of days after that! After days had passed the doctors didn’t see any alarming activity with my heart or vital signs and I was then sent to a lower unit called the PCCU, this typically is a unit where people are close to being discharged from hospital or are being treated in a non critical care sense. But that same night I was sent to the PCCU The pain that I was experiencing from the time I entered the hospital would officially come to light! I remember using the bathroom I just felt like my body was giving up on me ( really hard to explain) but I remember telling my Mom that “Something is Happening” and soon after that I went under Cardiac arrest! Doctors from all floors came running down to my room, they had to remove my mom from the room and had used An AED machine on me several times to revive me back! I went under cardiac arrest several times while I was in the hospital until I ended up in a coma and on life support machines for about a week!
“Their is a possibility your daughter will not make it", We put your daughter on the Heart Transplant list", She may need an LVAD" these were all the statements from doctors told to my mother due to the current state i was in. And It was only a matter of time before I couldn’t be on the life support machines anymore! My mom spent days in the hospital with my grandmother! And I had several friends, coworkers and family that came visit me and pray over me! At that time that’s all you could do! but with the help of GOD and the many doctors and nurses that worked around the clock at Johns Hopkins Hospital i somehow became the miracle no one could believe! The doctors had told my mom “ to try to get some sleep and to return back after a few hours. And when she did returned I was awake after days of being unresponsive! From the moment on I was on a road to recovery! To this day doctors still don’t know what happened that caused me (at the time 20 years old) to suffer from heart failure and undergo several cardiac arrests but they anticipated that it may have been a virus but in the words of Kanye West “I guess we’ll never know” lol.
"I Hope to tell my story and spread awareness about heart health around the world, who know I may end up writing book one day" -Bre'elle Hamilton
My Diagnosis was MyoCarditis ( Inflammation of the Heart Muscle")
January 1, 2016 Johns Hopkins Hospital ( Cardiac Unit Critical care)