A 33-year-old woman is not supposed to die of a heart attack. I have a lot to live for.
I’m Elizabeth Hobbie, and this is my story. I've always tried to walk for exercise and
just taking my normal walk I started to feel pain, going up hills especially. Nothing was
really helping, so eventually I did go to my primary care physician and she did an EKG
in the office that day and it was abnormal. She said, "Well, I want you to see a cardiologist."
We initially didn't believe there could be anything seriously wrong because we were young
and (because) we took care of ourselves. The initial coronary arteriogram was very surprising
in that she had a nearly 99% blockage in the main left coronary artery and then we shot
the other coronary artery and found the same thing. When we realized 'angiographically'
that she had this really severe issue going on, the room completely changed.
She started to develop rhythm disturbances and went into what's called ventricular fibrillation...that’s
a cardiac arrest situation, so we began the measures to resuscitate her heart. The problem
that we were having was that she wouldn’t go out of ventricular fibrillation, despite
all of our best measures. We placed the stent in her left main coronary artery and got it
fully open. The heart was still fully arrested. I remember praying with the chaplain and telling
our children that momma was very sick but that I loved them very much. A decision was
made that we put her on cardio-pulmonary bypass in the operating room. CPR was being done
down the hallway, in the elevator, up to the O.R., into the O.R, and kept going in the
O.R. for at least an hour until they were able to put he bypass machine in. The doctor
came down afterwards and told me that there was a very real chance that she was brain
dead. I’ve never seen anybody recover after two hours of CPR. I prayed for Elizabeth and
for our family and begged for her life. The next day I was talking to her and holding
her hand and telling her to open her eyes...and she did. And it only got more incredible over
the next 30 days. We thought that her only recourse was going to be to get a (heart)
transplant, so we made arrangements to go over to California Pacific Medical Center
in San Francisco. When she got to CPMC after a couple of days her heart started beating
again on its own. I remember waking up in the hospital room and seeing my extended family
around the bed and just thinking, 'wow everyone’s here, what happened?' I started breathing
more on my own each day until eventually they took the machine off after eleven days. Having
Elizabeth health again means everything to me. I can't thank the doctors, nurses and
technicians enough that care for Elizabeth and saved her life. I think it probably was
a miracle that so many pieces came together the way they did. I’m Elizabeth and that’s
my story.