My heart stopped once.
But don’t worry. I walked it off.
At least that’s what the ER seemed to think.
This is my journey through one night that I still wish I had advocated for myself. Could I have saved myself the trouble of a ten-year problem? It still haunts me.
When I lived in North Carolina, while I had access to some of the best doctors, the ER at the local hospital was awful. I am in no way knocking health care workers with this; some of them are amazing… But I had so many bad experiences at this hospital, and I wasn’t the only one. Being in healthcare is incredibly difficult. It’s about telling my experience and healing. I met a few good nurses at my various visits, but the number of things that were missed by doctors was outstanding.
This is not about blaming anyone for what happened; it has been over ten years now. I know how overworked people are; I understand that things happen. But still, part of my wishes I had been taken seriously that night. Because then I might have had the answers that I’m finally starting to find ten years ago.
I wasn’t new to the ER.
For the first 30 years of my life, I rode horses professionally and obsessively. I didn’t fall often, but when I did, it came in 3s or 5s. So I’d fall off either 2 more times or 4 more times in the coming weeks after the first one. Urgent care would send me to the ER for a CT, and the cycle would start. I probably had something in my chart like: “Scan her head. Send her home. Don’t bother telling her to stop riding.”
I always went to urgent care first and they’d always send me to the ER for a CT. It was a cycle. I wouldn’t say it happened too often, but when it did, it was normally a few visits close together. I tend to fall off in 3s or 5s. Meaning, I don’t fall off for ages, then I fall off once, and it is repeated 2 to 4 more times in the week or two to come. To be fair, are they normally injuries to other parts of my body? (That doesn’t make it any better M.)
Now the easy answer seems like it would be to stop riding, or take a break for a week, and then try. But trust me, 20-year-old me would have had all the answers and excuses. Horses were my life, and this was at a time when pressing pause was not an option. My job revolved around horses; there was no getting away from them. I’m not going to go too deep down the horse hole now, but let’s just say the term “crazy horse girl” did come from somewhere, and I am definitely one.
30-year-old me has the wisdom that 20-year-old me did not. And for once, I’m pressing pause on the horses and letting myself be okay with it. I need to heal for a little while. And that’s okay.
Back to the ER story, and to the start of my heart problems. Or at least my SVT (Supraventricular tachycardia), I was born with a rather large hole in my heart, but until then, it hadn’t caused me any problems.
That night
I was out at the bar with my now ex, and I was playing designated driver. I had been sober for two years because of medication, and I didn’t have a drop to drink that night.
I remember I was talking at the bar to friends, and then I thought I was having a panic attack(regular occurrence). My heart started racing and fluttering. So I went to get some air outside. The world started closing in, things started moving more slowly, my hearing got echoey… I tried to rush for a seat, but I collapsed before I got there. I hit a metal table on the way down. But don’t worry, my head broke my fall.
My heart had stopped…
It’s okay though…
It started again…
I still don’t have all the pieces. The first part I remember is waking up on my back with the ambulance lights lighting up the world around me. I wish I could go back to that moment and pull myself aside. Tell myself to be loud, to make sure I was heard. But, in my mid-twenties, I wasn’t equipped to handle that. Someone was at my arm, taking my pulse, and then I woke up.
They treated me like a drunk girl, and my wasted ex didn’t help the situation either. It is understandable. I was at a bar, passed out on the ground in the beer I had knocked from the table on the way down. It was probably midnight? It didn’t matter what I said; they wrote me off as drunk and didn’t see it as a cardiac incident. They dismissed me from the get-go, which probably didn’t help with the care at the hospital. They didn’t hook me up to any monitors for my heart; they just drove me to the hospital with my drunk ex up front. They left me in the hall, still not hooked up to anything. I, at this point, was scared and had no idea or understanding of what was going on.
After an hour or so wait in the hall, I was finally seen. Which started with the battery of tests and the heart workup. It also involved a head CT and a shoulder x-ray because that was the only thing I kept complaining about.
The ER said it was fine. A month later, an orthopedic doctor looked at the same X-ray and said, “You know this is a grade 2 shoulder separation, right?”
I didn’t. I thought I was just being a wimp because the ER told me it was nothing. Turns out, waking up on your back like a turtle and being unable to sit up without help is something. (Who would have thought?) At this point, it was too late to do much of anything, so he sent me to physical therapy, where I learned something very educational. Fractures are breaks, and it turns out I’ve broken a lot more bones than I thought. Silly horses.
The CT turned up nothing new from previous scans, and my EKG was normal enough to rule out a heart attack. They did blood work to double check, and to check for drugs and alcohol, which came back negative. I just remember them telling me the only thing that they could find for the reason that my heart had paused was a medication interaction. I also had some kind of slight abnormality on the EKG, but at the time, the doctor said he wasn’t worried and that they could monitor me overnight if I wanted. At which time, my ex said Oh no. We’ll go home. So we did.
At that point, it was too late anyway, though. The incident had already happened, and my heart was beating normally again. They decided it was a rare medication interaction with my Seroquel and antibiotics. There was apparently still a little something on my EKG, but at this point, my ex was sobering up and getting increasingly grumpy.
Here again, I wish I had pulled myself aside. Made myself stay in that bed. But I was so scared, my heart still felt a bit fluttery, but I did what I always do.
I pretended I was fine.
So we went home. They changed my antibiotics, which, when I went home, I looked up and had the same rare interaction as the other one, so I decided I’d just wait to see my doctor.
Looking back, I wish I had advocated for myself then. Had I known how hard I would have to fight to get my heart problem diagnosed at 25, I probably would have stayed, even with the fear of my ex losing his mind at me. Because let me tell you, as a physically fit 25-year-old with anxiety, it’s REALLY difficult to get a cardiologist to take you seriously. Because being a fit woman in her twenties means that “I’m too young to have heart problems”. According to one cardiologist.
10 Years Later
It’s taken a decade, but I finally got taken seriously.
I had two successful cardiac ablations for SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) in 2018 and 2019. It’s a condition where your heart suddenly races out of rhythm. When they finally caught an episode on a monitor, my heart rate was in the 200s. My resting rate is usually around 55.
The issue wasn’t just the speed; it was the drop. My heart would spike, then crash back down. After the second ablation, my doctor explained that I had extra electrical pathways in my heart, likely caused by the hole I was born with closing on its own. When my heart restarted that night at the bar, it probably rerouted through those faulty paths and kept doing it. She was able to replicate the rhythm and fix it, but warned it might come back.
In 2020, I had a third ablation attempt, but they couldn’t trigger the abnormal rhythm. So instead, they implanted a loop recorder — a small device under my skin that continuously tracks heart activity. Anytime it hit above a certain threshold, or below a certain threshold, it would flag it and send it to my doctors. I had one episode while wearing it, but just my luck, it was during a period where I didn’t have my bedside monitor next to my bed, so it just had that and the flag. The doctor at the time said he wasn’t concerned, but if it kept happening, I’d need to do something about it.
Well, it happened again in April of 2025 and then again shortly after that. By which time the loop recorder was dead. A few weeks ago, I had the loop recorder replaced. I’m at a new doctor now, because I live in Louisiana again, and I’ve had to go through the whole process again. It took 3 months for me to get this one replaced because I had to see a cardiologist before I saw the EP (electrophysiologist) who replaced it in hopes we’d catch the episode again.
My heart stopped a few times.
They told me to walk it off.
Ten years later, I’m still walking… just slower, more carefully, and a hell of a lot louder.
Maybe that’s what surviving looks like. Not just some miracle recovery. It’s refusing to be silent when your body is trying to scream.
Publication note Originally on Medium (October 10, 2025). This is the canonical version.
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