A Place to Share

Update June 17, 2007

It's now 2007 and I've moved to a mid-sized town in Southwest Washington. I'm working to support the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association www.scaa.org and the American Heart Association and our local Blood Bank as a public speaker.

On July 16,1987, I was 35 years old, and playing softball with my co-workers when I suddenly felt dizzy, and realized I was going to faint. Being a very type-A person at the time, I decided to lie down and faint rather than remain standing and slump to the ground in a disorderly fashion. When I had lowered myself to the ground, I realized that my chest was getting tight and my heart was getting really big. I lost consciousness, and suffered a cardiac arrest aka: "sudden death" (I love the fact that football guys picked that phrase to end a game in an unusual way, lol). So, when my heart stopped, it caused anoxia, which is a lack of oxygen to the brain. I was really blessed that evening with the presence of a man who had a cell phone, which in those days was really rare. He was able to call 911, there were a couple of people at the scene who knew cpr, and then when someone ran to try and get addi- tional help, the first person they found was an off-duty policeman. He came and began the "good" cpr on me, as my friends called it. It turned out that the softball field was right around the corner from a fire station, and the medics came quickly. It took 3 charges with the pads to get my heart started again. I love firefighters :). I had to be put on life support for a few days, and was in a coma for about a week (I can never remember, lol). When I came out of the coma, I didn't have any memory of being married, living in Seattle, having my two kids (5 and 1 at the time) or anything else post 1972 or so. It took a few weeks to get most of it back, but the residual effects have been damage to my short term memory skills, my multi-task- ing abilities and general executive skills. I'd bought a full disability plan three months prior to the cardiac arrest (I was the office manager of a law firm here in Seattle) and the policy called for me to be unable to do what I'd done the previous ten years. Since there was no known reason for the cardiac arrest, and the assumption was that it was stress induced, the insurance company decided that my claim wasn't big enough to risk a possible lawsuit (see "previous employers") if I died AGAIN (lol, I love that phrase) because they made me go back to work.

So, my husband and I divorced a couple of years later, and now I'm a single mom with a twelve year old daughter (I'm writing this in January of 1999) who lives with me, and my 16 year old son lives with his dad. I still live in Seattle, I'm able to volunteer at some wonderful places that appreciate my help. I'm active in my church (liberal Episcopalian), I work alot on maintaining my little old (1908) house, and over the years we have accumulated two cats, two lizards and one dog (a Belgian Tervuren we rescued from the shelter).

I didn't know/admit I really had a tbi until 1994 when I went for testing at the University of Washington's Brain Injury Clinic here in Seattle. It was through them that I was able to recognize the tbi's effects, and the tools that the speech therapist taught me helped me get a handle on some really troublesome independent living issues, like bill-paying, calendar tracking, etc. I found tbichat in 1997, and all of a sudden I wasn't alone anymore. And someone else understood why shopping for groceries can be a little tricky sometimes! I enjoy the chat room, but my multi-tasking skills cause me to bail out if there are alot of people in there, sometimes. I get lost in the names, lol. I'm glad I'm here, and I'm glad you're here reading this, too.

Take care. Sincerely, Mary aka Stride

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