To dispel any rumours circulating about my health or what may have happened to me recently, I thought I’d offer up the facts as I presently know them.  I had a sudden cardiac arrest on February 4th down in Palm Desert while playing pickleball. Cardiac arrest means my heart stopped pumping and I stopped breathing. By all accounts I have a big healthy heart from a lifetime of being active. My resting heart rate is low, there is no threatening plaque build up, no valve issues, good high pumping fraction etc. I only know all this now because of all the attention my heart got, first at the Eisenhower Hospital in Rancho Mirage and later, after being flown home, at St. Paul’s in Vancouver. 

I had been quite sick through most of December and half of January with some of the various viruses that were circulating on the North Shore at the time. I’d no sooner got over the first when the second showed up. Who knows these days, but I think it was what I would call a chest cold in December – coughed myself silly for four weeks – followed by the flu, with a fever, for two weeks in mid-January. I tested for COVID but it showed  negative. My flu and COVID vaccines were up to date.

My arrest was a bit of a mystery until St. Paul’s did a 90 minute very detailed scan of my heart on their new high tech MRI machine. This revealed scarring in a ventricle wall. The scarring indicated myocarditis, likely triggered by an inflammation from one of my recent viral infections. Because the ventricle walls transmit the electrical signals needed for the heart’s rhythmic beating, this finding strongly suggested that I had been felled by a deadly arrhythmia, or ineffective heart rhythm.

The survival rate for sudden cardiac arrests outside of hospital settings is already very low, in the range of 10-15%. Throw in the fact no paramedics arrived for a very long time after the arrest and the survival rate plummets to something well below 1%. 

How did I get so lucky? That day I had a guardian angel named Margo, a woman who coached and taught at the nearby aquatic centre. She had just recently updated her first aid qualifications, including a refresher course on CPR. Margo, who was playing a few courts over from mine, ran over and immediately took charge of the scene. She told someone to call 911, got someone else to go look for an AED in the nearby recreational facilities, and then commenced CPR, ultimately recruiting a couple of other players to help. After quite a while (it has been suggested 10 minutes or so) they resuscitated me for a brief period (perhaps 45 seconds or so) before I had a second arrest. Margo and her helpers resumed CPR for a few more minutes until an AED arrived, was set up, and almost immediately delivered a shock that fully resuscitated me. An ambulance arrived moments later. I was unconscious from the time I first arrested until slowly becoming aware that I was in an ambulance . This part of the story has been reconstructed from Margo and others that observed it.

Ultimately, St. Paul’s installed an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) which detects and works to stop irregular heart rhythms from setting up and, if it fails at that, will deliver a shock to my heart to establish a proper rhythm. I’ll be out of commission for at least 3 months to rest and heal. I’m to avoid all vigorous exercise so while you may see me at the courts, I won’t be playing on the courts for a while. 

Here are a few of the lessons I’m taking away from this incident:

– buy the best travel insurance you can when you leave the country. I bought a TuGo policy from a broker. Two days after an arrhythmia stopped my heart (twice), the insurer contended I had stabilized, in that I had not had a third arrest in 48 hours, and they wanted me to buy my own plane ticket home to seek any further medical attention there. Thankfully, my doctors at Eisenhower told TuGo that their plan was ridiculous and that they would never discharge me without a safe plan to get me home. They defined this as having my heart monitored every step of the way by medical professionals, with access to an AED, and having me delivered home right into a hospital bed in a cardiology unit.

– before you leave the country, search out the name and number of a lawyer that you can call if your insurance company tries to bully you and play hardball when you are vulnerable and in a hospital bed. Luckily, I have daughter who works as a paralegal for a personal injury lawyer. TuGo agreed to air ambulance me home after the briefest contact with my lawyer.

– every pickleball court should have an AED within a minute or two’s reach (ie at the courts at all times). Unfortunately, AEDs must be locked up (because otherwise they will be stolen) so there must be several signs at the courts saying where the AED is located and the names and phone numbers of several people who know the combination to the lock. 

– in the case of the North Shore Pickleball Club, it should place AED’s at all court complexes on the North Shore, regardless of whether the Club offers permitted play on those courts or not. Your members play on all those courts.

– The NSPC should also continue to sponsor basic training in CPR and AED operation, with refresher courses annually, and promote members to take such courses.

– The NSPC should also determine the address of all the pickleball courts and complexes on the North Shore and add signage at these courts to indicate what specific address and general location callers should give when they call 911. I have now watched at one cardiac incident, and participated at another (mine) where paramedics were delayed because no street address was provided to them.

Thanks to all my pickleball friends, including the friends I didn’t even know I had that were at the court complex where I went down (I didn’t know anyone there) who have expressed concern and support for me and Linda throughout this ordeal. 

Dan Schroeter