Woman saved from death by husband’s action
DALLAS — Call it a gathering of storm clouds, or an aligning of the planets. Maybe it was a carefully planned pattern of fate’s dominoes, when knocking down that first tile could start a motion that almost couldn’t be stopped.
To recount all that was lining up that Labor Day weekend of 2011 would entail a deep breath and several head shakings of disbelief. Instead, here’s where it culminated: In Marla Sewall’s cardiac arrest and subsequent near-drowning; the response from her husband, Cary, that brought her back to life; her determination to keep living this life she holds so precious.
Marla is 43, and I’m not the first person to tell her she looks like Jennifer Aniston. She’s a former gymnast and cheerleader who plays tennis fervently and who, a year ago, was at the peak of training for her 12th marathon.
“I did them till last year,” she says. “Then I got sick. It’s been quite a journey.”
Every step of the way, says this mother of four boys, “has been a miracle.”
The first was her decision, a year ago the first Monday of September, to take a bath. It was around midnight and she wasn’t feeling well — not surprisingly, after running 40 miles in three days and playing tennis with Cary on two of them. The second step, she says, was Cary hearing the water running.
“There’s divine intervention,” Cary says. “There’s luck. There’s being physically fit. The fact I would hear anything and get up is a miracle and that I checked is astounding. In hindsight, if she hadn’t drawn a bath, I wouldn’t have heard anything. She would have had this in bed, and I’d have found her the next morning.”
When he saw his wife, she was face-up in the bathtub. Her eyes were open; she was blue, limp, lifeless.
‘An eternity’
“I pulled her out, started CPR, breathing, chest compressions, back and forth — hysterically, as you can imagine,” he says. “What seemed like an eternity was probably two minutes or more of me screaming and working, blowing, chest compressions. I finally got her to gurgle.”
He called 911; Marla was taken to Texas Health Presbyterian of Dallas. She was in the intensive care unit for almost a week. As time passed, brain damage became less and less of a fear. Tests showed no blockage, no high blood pressure. Everything looked normal, until she underwent an electrophysiology test, or EP.
During the procedure, “I went into ventricular tachycardia, and my heart stopped beating. They had to shock it back.”
Doctors determined that’s what Marla had initially suffered. The dangerously rapid heartbeat caused her to pass out as she leaned down to turn on the water. The condition can also lead to ventricular fibrillation, which can cause sudden death.
People survive only if someone nearby has a defibrillator or knows CPR. Cary did. He’d taken it in high school, years earlier, though oddly enough he’d used it to revive the couple’s son, Kyle, who almost drowned six years ago.
“The doctors said it’s a genetic heart issue,” he says. “Heat, dehydration, lack of potassium — they probably had something to do with it. I’ll never forget what the doctor said: ‘Ninety percent of the time, we find this condition doing an autopsy.’ ”
Marla had a pacemaker with a defibrillator implanted in her chest. It’s the “ultimate safety net,” Cary says; were her heart to go into “v-tach” again, the defibrillator would automatically shock it back into rhythm.
As time went on and she started, with every doctor’s blessing, running again, she took it off.
Scaling back
A friend has told her, and Marla agrees, that she isn’t as intense as she used to be. She runs, but is fine with running 5 miles instead of 20 at a time. She’s been training, but for a 10-mile race this month and the Dallas Half Marathon in December, not a marathon.
“I didn’t get this second chance to just sit on the couch,” Marla says. “I love running. I love the feeling of it, and I love my friends.”
Though she doesn’t like public speaking, Marla is happy to share her story at fundraising events for the American Heart Association. She raised money for the organization’s Heart Walk earlier this month, a week after what Cary calls “the anniversary of her rebirth-day.”
“I don’t have blockage; I don’t have heart disease,” she says. “But when you hear the statistics” — 1 in 3 Americans dies of heart disease and strokes — “getting the word out is important to raise money for research.”
Plus, the organization is instrumental in teaching CPR, which saved her life.
“You can learn what you need to know about CPR in about five minutes,” Cary says. “Usually, there’s not a paramedic or doctor around to save someone’s life. I did something and I did it immediately.”