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Name: Clint
Age: 39
Diagnosis: Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
Device: Medtronics ICD – Marquis DR 7274 – set at 30 joules
On the morning of August 21, 2004, I had decided to take my wife and two boys camping at my deer lease in deep east Texas. We packed our gear and necessities and headed out for what we expected to be an enjoyable overnight family trip. We live in Houston and our deer lease is approx 3 hours northeast of us by Jasper, Texas. My parents live halfway between the two points in Buna, so we stopped there to have lunch. My parents and nephew Zach said that they were going to ride up to the lease also, so my wife and kids decided they would ride with them. I told them that I was going to go ahead and get up there, fill the feeders with corn and that I would meet them at the campsite.
Our lease is in the middle of 10,000+ acres of forest land. There is nothing around for miles, and no one to hear you if you holler for help. My feeders sit about 500 yards away from the road, down a steep hill and at the bottom of a ravine. To make matters worse, my feeder site is approx 2 ˝ miles from the campsite. I arrived at the feeders, unloaded my four wheeler and headed down the hill, leaving my truck parked on the road. I began to fill the feeders and as I went to put the lid on the last one, I felt a jolt, saw a flash of light and fell to the ground. My initial thought, was I had been struck by lightning. I sat down and stayed there for 15 minutes before getting up. I was a bit shaken, but otherwise fine, so I stood up to get out of there. I took 2 steps and then I was hit again. This time I knew what it was. My ICD was going off and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t recall my heart rate being high, but I lied down like I was instructed to do in the case that it did fire. Only the ICD didn’t stop. It continued to shock me even though I was trying to lie completely still. After what must have been the 30th shock, I called my parents cell phone only to get voice mail. It’s difficult to get service where we were at because of lack of towers. I decided then that I was either going to lie there and die or I was going to somehow make it to my truck and drive to the camp for help. So, I painstakingly began crawling up the hill on my hands and knees, with my ICD shocking me on average, every minute. After about 30 minutes, I made it to my truck. I knew that I couldn’t drive with the trailer still hitched to it, so I made my way around the back and unhitched the trailer, grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and got in the truck. My ICD is still going off at this point. I drove the winding, dirt road 2 ˝ miles and saw the campsite and my parents van! As I pulled up, I had to avoid running over the boys who were playing in the road. Later on the boys would tell me they thought that I was drunk because of the erratic driving. My mother and wife and taken a walk and my dad began waving at me from our camp house. I tried to signal to him that I needed help and he finally realized that something was wrong. He ran to the truck and started like for wounds as I was bleeding profusely from my mouth after having bit my tongue numerous times. He looked up at me and started to ask what was wrong and the ICD fired again for what would be the last time. I’ve never seen my father turn as pale as he did at that moment. He began yelling for my mother and wife and then jumped in the van to go get them. They were back in less than a minute and my wife grabbed the phone and called 911. The ambulance arrived 8 minutes later, shot me up with 6 ccs of some medication that slowed my heart rate and drove me to the Newton, TX airport where life flight was waiting. I was flown to Beaumont to be stabilized at 8:00 p.m. and then grounded due to bad weather. The initial flight plan was to fly directly to Methodist hospital in Houston. The Medtronics technician in Beaumont evaluated my ICD and asked to shake my hand because she had never seen anything like this. Around 2 a.m. Sunday morning we were cleared too take off. I arrived at Methodist around 3 a.m. and was immediately placed in I.C.U. My doctor arrived approx at 10 a.m. and started to review the Medtronics graphs and notes. (NOTE: my doctor is a world renowned electro-physiologist. This is not a man who confuses easily!). We watched for an hour as he shook his head and scribbled things down. Finally he came in the room and said that he could see no real reason for the episode to have occurred. The thought was that the ICD mistook a Sinus Tach for a V-Tach and fired thinking it was correcting an abnormal beat. Well, since there was no abnormal beat, the first shock set my heart out of rhythm, and then continued to fire to correct the mistake. It took it 74 times to reset my heart beat.
I was released from the hospital on Monday, August 23, 2004 with no permanent heart damage, no medical reason for the incident and what my family believes to be post traumatic stress disorder. I am taking Tredozone to sleep and have not gotten over the fear that I was about to die. I go back to the Dr. on 9/02/04 and hope to get more answers then. I will update this later and let everyone know what we found out. IS THERE ANY BODY OUT THERE EVER HEARD OF THIS
Age: 39
Diagnosis: Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
Device: Medtronics ICD – Marquis DR 7274 – set at 30 joules
On the morning of August 21, 2004, I had decided to take my wife and two boys camping at my deer lease in deep east Texas. We packed our gear and necessities and headed out for what we expected to be an enjoyable overnight family trip. We live in Houston and our deer lease is approx 3 hours northeast of us by Jasper, Texas. My parents live halfway between the two points in Buna, so we stopped there to have lunch. My parents and nephew Zach said that they were going to ride up to the lease also, so my wife and kids decided they would ride with them. I told them that I was going to go ahead and get up there, fill the feeders with corn and that I would meet them at the campsite.
Our lease is in the middle of 10,000+ acres of forest land. There is nothing around for miles, and no one to hear you if you holler for help. My feeders sit about 500 yards away from the road, down a steep hill and at the bottom of a ravine. To make matters worse, my feeder site is approx 2 ˝ miles from the campsite. I arrived at the feeders, unloaded my four wheeler and headed down the hill, leaving my truck parked on the road. I began to fill the feeders and as I went to put the lid on the last one, I felt a jolt, saw a flash of light and fell to the ground. My initial thought, was I had been struck by lightning. I sat down and stayed there for 15 minutes before getting up. I was a bit shaken, but otherwise fine, so I stood up to get out of there. I took 2 steps and then I was hit again. This time I knew what it was. My ICD was going off and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t recall my heart rate being high, but I lied down like I was instructed to do in the case that it did fire. Only the ICD didn’t stop. It continued to shock me even though I was trying to lie completely still. After what must have been the 30th shock, I called my parents cell phone only to get voice mail. It’s difficult to get service where we were at because of lack of towers. I decided then that I was either going to lie there and die or I was going to somehow make it to my truck and drive to the camp for help. So, I painstakingly began crawling up the hill on my hands and knees, with my ICD shocking me on average, every minute. After about 30 minutes, I made it to my truck. I knew that I couldn’t drive with the trailer still hitched to it, so I made my way around the back and unhitched the trailer, grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and got in the truck. My ICD is still going off at this point. I drove the winding, dirt road 2 ˝ miles and saw the campsite and my parents van! As I pulled up, I had to avoid running over the boys who were playing in the road. Later on the boys would tell me they thought that I was drunk because of the erratic driving. My mother and wife and taken a walk and my dad began waving at me from our camp house. I tried to signal to him that I needed help and he finally realized that something was wrong. He ran to the truck and started like for wounds as I was bleeding profusely from my mouth after having bit my tongue numerous times. He looked up at me and started to ask what was wrong and the ICD fired again for what would be the last time. I’ve never seen my father turn as pale as he did at that moment. He began yelling for my mother and wife and then jumped in the van to go get them. They were back in less than a minute and my wife grabbed the phone and called 911. The ambulance arrived 8 minutes later, shot me up with 6 ccs of some medication that slowed my heart rate and drove me to the Newton, TX airport where life flight was waiting. I was flown to Beaumont to be stabilized at 8:00 p.m. and then grounded due to bad weather. The initial flight plan was to fly directly to Methodist hospital in Houston. The Medtronics technician in Beaumont evaluated my ICD and asked to shake my hand because she had never seen anything like this. Around 2 a.m. Sunday morning we were cleared too take off. I arrived at Methodist around 3 a.m. and was immediately placed in I.C.U. My doctor arrived approx at 10 a.m. and started to review the Medtronics graphs and notes. (NOTE: my doctor is a world renowned electro-physiologist. This is not a man who confuses easily!). We watched for an hour as he shook his head and scribbled things down. Finally he came in the room and said that he could see no real reason for the episode to have occurred. The thought was that the ICD mistook a Sinus Tach for a V-Tach and fired thinking it was correcting an abnormal beat. Well, since there was no abnormal beat, the first shock set my heart out of rhythm, and then continued to fire to correct the mistake. It took it 74 times to reset my heart beat.
I was released from the hospital on Monday, August 23, 2004 with no permanent heart damage, no medical reason for the incident and what my family believes to be post traumatic stress disorder. I am taking Tredozone to sleep and have not gotten over the fear that I was about to die. I go back to the Dr. on 9/02/04 and hope to get more answers then. I will update this later and let everyone know what we found out. IS THERE ANY BODY OUT THERE EVER HEARD OF THIS
I AM A VERY QUIET PERSON OF FEW WORDS. Now everyone can see that RIGHT???? 
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