about your life before this happened to you. And then we can start kind of diving into your story. Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Jacqueline McGlone. I got married, and Con was my maiden name. But I'm Jacqueline McGlone. I am an eight-year survivor from a cardiac arrest episode that happened in 2014. In 2014, I was a newlywed. I was married for a year. Life changed a lot after that. At that point in time, I was transitioning from college into starting my life, getting ready to plan to have kids, what have you, very active in the community. I was a kid soccer coach, very involved, very active. I really thought I had the world at my fingertips. And then this episode happened, and a lot changed. Fortunately, I've made a very great recovery. It was arduous along the way, but it was a great recovery. So I'm very pleased that I get to talk a little bit about that with you today. So we'll go into, just go into it? Sure. All right. So like I said, I was just getting ready to turn 30. Thought nothing of it. I was experiencing what I know now are very classic cardiac arrest symptoms for women. I had pain in my chest, pain in my neck. And I was an athlete. I played Division I soccer. So I was still playing soccer at that point in time in my life, recreationally, but still playing. When I got back out on the field and I was playing, I turned to my husband. I said, I think I overdid it. I think turning 30, I don't think I can do this anymore. And I was wrong. It wasn't that I overdid it. It was that my body was trying to tell me that it was hurt, that it was sick, that there was a problem. At the time I was coaching soccer, I had 12 little girls that I coached every week. We had practice. I went to practice, because why not? I just, oh, I'm not feeling great. I'll get over it. I didn't get over it. On that soccer field, I actually did collapse. I went into cardiac arrest. Fortunately, I was coaching in a very affluent area. Always told, watch what you do. There's a lot of doctors and nurses out there when you're coaching. Well, there was a doctor on the field that day. And I was able to receive CPR within moments of collapsing. I think that was some of the key to my long-term success from this instance, is that I was able to receive CPR in the community very early. Ambulance did come. There was no AED on the field on that day. Ambulance did come. I was shocked. They did get a heart rate back, heart rhythm back. And then I was brought over to a local hospital. Went into CT, to the cath lab. I had three stents put in. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very speedy recovery from those stents. Some of them were collapsing. It took a long time to get me stable. At that point in time, it was my parents, my husband, well, what's next? What do we do? How do we keep her progressing forward? There was a lot of conversation about what could have been done. But a local physician who was working on temperature management came in and said, you need to start this process. And so that's what they did. I was transferred to a hospital in the area that could take me. It was in the same hospital system. So fortunately, it wasn't a major transition. But was brought over there, was placed on ECMO. And they started the temperature management protocol. I was on that for approximately three days, and then had a normal, I guess, transition to an awake status that took a day or so. Not many complications of the sedation of the ECMO other than I did have VAP, I had pneumonia, what have you. The one thing that was important to note was that I really have no recollection of that time. I went back a couple weeks later, went back a couple months later to talk to folks. No recollection of names, no recollection of faces. So that time was a very tough time for my parents, tough time for my husband, trying to make sure that me as an individual, that my personality, that my wants were being communicated to my caregivers. But they really did a great job. Once I was stable or stable enough, I was transitioned to a rehab hospital. Again, this rehab hospital was in the hospital system that I was fortunately at. They did have a neuro-brain trauma rehab unit, and I was there for about, I want to say, close to a month. Again, I don't have a great recollection of how many days, but it felt really long at the end. And so I did get discharged home. I got discharged home with outpatient PT, outpatient OT, outpatient ST, as well as cardiac rehab. Most of those lasted around another three months, with ST and cardiac rehab taking the longest. Flash forward to after all those therapies, it took about a year. At the year mark physically, I was back to current state. I started playing soccer again. I started doing all those things, running, what have you. Neurologically, I think it took about four months until everything started to come together. I'm an avid reader. It took a long time for me to pick up my e-reader again and start reading. It's hard to keep a lot of things contained. Thoughts would go away, what have you. But around four months post-episode, that's when I feel like I got full neurological function back. Flash forward now, eight years later, I was able to have two children. Yes, I was highly monitored. Yes, my condition came into play, but nothing that was serious. And I'm living a pretty normal, I'd say pretty wonderful life from my perspective. And I'm very thankful. A lot of what you guys talked about here today was a protocol that I followed. And it really is the reason I can sit here and talk to you. Some of the instances that were brought up where neurological symptoms or neurological responses weren't seen right away, that was me. And just following the protocol, trusting in the process, believing in the science, it got me where I am. So that's my short little bio. Well, I appreciate your applause. But it's really all you, your clinicians, your effort learning this science that really makes a difference for your patients. So I applaud you guys as well. Are there questions? I'd really like to take questions. I know I don't have all the clinical knowledge like I prefaced earlier. I don't have a great recollection of that point in my time. And I think it's probably for the best. But I do have asked a lot of questions. If there's anything I can answer for you, anything from my experience that I could delve into, I would be glad to get into that with you guys. So how long did I receive CPR? Yeah, so I received it within, I would say, from bystanders within five minutes of my collapse. And it took about, they said, 12 minutes, 10 to 12 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. And so I received active CPR of, I guess, between 10 to 15 minutes. Has your family told you anything about the communication around your status that kind of sticks out? Yeah, so two important things. When the providers talked to my parents, when the nurse and my husband talked to my parents and my husband, they were very informative. They were very good. But nurses and doctors are busy. And they're not there a lot. One of the key things that sticks out in my mind, there was an instance where my dad, he still talks about it. He was very upset. And it was a social worker or caregiver came in to kind of talk about, well, do we have to transition to end-of-life care? Do we have to transition to a palliative care state? And she couldn't, at the time, speak to the science, speak to what do we need to expect from what's going on for this current patient, this current condition. And she just went to a place where, let's start expecting the worst for that. And that instance set a very bad tone. And it took a while to get back to, well, she does have a chance. Some of the things that we're not seeing right away, they're normal. Her body went through trauma. Things of that nature. And so ensuring that your team that takes care of your patients is really well-informed, can talk very accurately about what's going on as it relates to maybe prognosis and whatnot, is really important. Doctors and nurses are really well-informed. But other clinicians are involved. And making sure that they can also communicate to the patient and the patient's caregivers, I think is really important. You said two things. Oh, did I? Well, we'll blame it on the obnoxious brain injury. I was wondering if you can comment on when you, after you got discharged from the hospital, sort of from your family's perspective, what they went through and what they told you. Yeah. After the hospital, for me personally, I was at rehab. They wanted you to go see a mental health care provider. They wanted to make sure that I wasn't too emotional, that I was able to understand what happened. And in that point in my life, I was a survivor. And I was in survivor mode. And I wanted to, whatever you put in front of me, whatever goal you put in front of me, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get over it. And I'm going to go forward. My family, my parents, my husband, even my in-laws, were of the complete other mindset. Put her in a bubble. She can't do anything. She can't go anywhere. She can't be, not my, my husband bought a baby monitor and stuck it next to my bed. So there was, it was a big, there was a big gulf in our mentality from where I came from and from where they came from. And I always say it all the time. I had the easy part. I would, I did nothing. I slept. I really, I slept through a lot of the hard part. They were the ones that really had the trauma. They were the ones that really were, were fighting this for me. So I, I respect them a lot. They went through a lot. Did they receive any sort of support afterwards or even? Yeah. I, we sent, I sent my husband to go see our PCP. He's very, he's, I don't want to call him a hypochondriac now, but he kind of is. Everything, like, just go see the doctor. Just go see the doctor. We did get some mental health care for them. Just to, just someone to talk to is really important at that point in time. Hi. Hi. Oh. A young lady to get three stents. I mean, that's, that's kind of unusual. It was very unusual. To this day, we're not really sure what caused it. There's a lot of theories. Maybe it was birth control. Maybe it was other things. It wasn't, it wasn't high cholesterol. I don't have high cholesterol to this date. Anything of that nature. No hypertension. I don't have hypertension. I didn't have it then. I don't have it now. So a lot of the traditional reasons that you would think that someone's heart could stop, I had none of those. So it's, it was very unusual. And I think that, in and of itself, was the hardest thing for myself and for my family to internalize. And it doesn't make any sense. What's happening right now makes no sense. There was no indicators along the way. Aside from the day before it happened, those pains in my neck and whatnot. I just have to say you're so vibrant. And it's incredible. I'm very curious, you know, once you kind of learned about your condition and everything you went through, like how did you, like mental health wise, kind of overcome some of that? And you don't live in fear, right? You live vibrantly and move forward. Like what are some of the things that you did to really keep yourself in that mentality? So I'll say I was really fortunate. I didn't have children at the time. But what did it for me was I was coaching soccer, as I prefaced earlier. And I had 12 kids that I wanted to prove to be a good example for. And that really helped me strive to get through some of this. To see them, to see their responses, I get really emotional. They were really young. Nobody's looking at you. No, I'm good. I promise. But now, flash forward eight years later, these same girls who are on the field with me, the same girls who had to witness that, they're in college, four of them are pre-med, which I'm like, well, maybe it happened for a reason, right? Sorry, I'm good. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Do you recall sort of how long was it before you sort of started waking up and showing some of these like sort of optimistic prognostic sort of signs? That's a great question. I did say that I don't really, I couldn't even remember faces from the ICU, and I was about, I was in cardiac rehab, or excuse me, I was at the rehab hospital for about two weeks. And a speaker came in, and he had a brain, a traumatic brain injury as well. He was a surfer. And his presentation, him walking around the unit is the first thing that I really remember. I don't remember talking to my husband or my parents or anything like that, and that's about a month, a full month later that it took for me to be able to recall memories. Now, I pretend, you know, that I think I have memories of what I did prior to go to that practice that day or what have you. And I don't know if I really do or if it's someone was telling me what I did, and I kind of just infer a memory. But the one that I really feel comfortable saying I remember is that experience about a month later in the rehab hospital. Sort of a systems question for you. So you mentioned you went to a specialized rehab facility for people who've had brain injury. I feel like we have kind of globally pretty nice and streamlined systems for rehabilitation for stroke and traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. And cardiac arrest doesn't always get lumped into that. So do you kind of know how you landed there? Was it like extra advocacy or was that the normal pathway? And how was that experience for you and how pivotal was it? I don't think it was the normal pathway to go to the brain trauma unit. My husband and my parents were very, very worried about my neurological recovery. I'm very type A. I'm very on the point. I'm a list maker, and I check my lists and what have. And so for them, they were very cognizant and careful that they wanted to make sure that I was able to be myself after I recovered. And so they really advocated that anything neurological was really well addressed in my post-recovery and that I was treated in that type of way. I think I probably would have landed there without their advocacy as well because of how the hospital system is put together. But I'm not sure if I would have landed on that exact floor or what have you. Any other? You're slower waking up in memory, like that's just like that. I say that all the time. A really good friend of mine, her sister is a CTICU nurse. She was in the same healthcare system but a different hospital. And she was asking me about that. And I said, I think my brain did what was best for me. It wasn't ready to be aware of everything that was going on. Sure, I was functioning cognitively before that time, but I don't think emotionally I was ready to understand what was happening before that time. So I think it was a very protective measure that my body put, a protective state that my body put me in. And I do believe it was a little bit of divine intervention as well. Yeah, I don't have, it was more of a just feeling like I was underwater, slow moving, slow to pick things up, slow to hold the memory. You could say something to me, we'd have a conversation, and then a couple hours later I'd be like, did we talk today? So those type of symptoms were what I was experiencing, and it took a while to get kind of comfortable again and confident again that I could carry conversations and execute tasks that someone gave me or whatnot post-recovery. Yes? So, I'd actually argue that things are for the better. If you recall, a while ago, I'm very type A. I'm very move, move, move, move, move, And I would just go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. I think the awareness, the mortality of what I experienced in this event has caused me to slow down, to pause a little bit, to appreciate what's going on. Even like playing soccer and my foot skills, I take a moment to survey what's around me more often. And so, when I'm on the soccer field, I'm making smarter decisions. Maybe my touch isn't as fast as it was, and it could also be because I'm 10 years older, but I feel like my appreciation to step back and see the bigger picture has really changed. And I do attribute it to this experience in my life, because sometimes you need something to just wake you up and say, you know, pause, take a breath. There's a lot of good out there, notice it. And I think that was something that came out of this experience for me. Yeah, so we'll take the first question. For behavioral or being a little wonky, my husband cracks jokes about me all the time. When I was extubated, when I came off sedation and everything, I was saying pretty funny things to a lot of people. I was singing songs when people came in the room. I was talking about things that as a woman or as a grown woman I probably wouldn't have been talking about in mixed company. So yes, definitely. I reverted to like an 18-year-old girl again. I was giggling at things that I shouldn't have, and he brings that up all the time. And your second question, what was your second question? Yes. I do think my family, my husband, they're very courageous, and I feel like I pulled a lot from them. But I also think they did a really good job of advocating for me, putting up pictures. So the nurses, the doctors knew who they were taking care of, and I think I received a lot of rewards from that effort of them. Is that internal? I don't. So, yeah, exactly, exactly. They thought it was very localized to that spontaneous plaque rupture, and once they were able to clean that, they didn't think I had any long-term. I was classified as having, oh, what's the right term? I can't remember. But that had a weak heart, and so I had to work to get it back, but it wasn't that my heart had electrical issues and that type of device would have been helpful moving forward. So you have a room full of critical care providers of various sorts here. What are one or two things that you think doctors, and nurses, and pharmacists, and other professionals who are heavily invested in taking care of cardiac arrest patients because they're here should know going forward based on your experience, and also what you've learned after talking to other survivors? Yeah. I think it's really important, and this is a great question. I think it's really important. Cardiac arrest and living through cardiac arrest feels very new. You don't hear a lot about this. So families, and patients, and caregivers, they really question what you're doing. They really don't understand the technology or the science behind what you're doing. So being patient and explaining along the way is really important, and almost explaining more in detail than you think you need to. I'll say, my brothers, my sister, everyone was at the hospital for a long time and anyone would send any term to them, they'd be on their phone, they'd be Googling it, they'd be trying to research what's going on. So I think providing as much information so that they get factual information is really, really important. The thing that I really learned the most talking with survivors and talking with folks in this community, is really how important CPR in the community is. This science is wonderful, and everything you do is wonderful, but if someone can't intervene before they get to you, the chances for you guys to be successful, just they diminish, and the more we can advocate for that in our community, is really what gives you guys, you're smart, you're bright, you're doing what's best you can for your patient, but it really gives you the leg up. It's throwing an easy pitch in there for you instead of giving you something hard because they didn't receive any CPR in the community. I think that's a great point to maybe even start to wrap up with. I don't think we knew when we were planning this session that cardiac arrest would be on the headline of every major newspaper and TV station over the past couple of weeks, because of the DeMar Hamlin case. But I look at this as a pivotal opportunity for those of us who are interested in this disease to really increase community awareness, hopefully get some big-time resources behind affecting this disease in a positive way. Getting lots of people trained and interested in learning CPR in recognition of cardiac arrests, getting more AEDs out in the community. I think one small thing we all can do, because you all do a lot of big things all the time as critical care providers, is look to see whether your community has a lay responder app. Mine uses PulsePoint. I'm not sure what San Francisco uses. But we are all well-trained to do CPR and well-versed and can affect the course of cardiac arrest patients not just in the ICU, but as a responder in the community. Two of my colleagues have gotten dispatched to cardiac arrests near their homes and have responded and saved people's lives in Seattle. These things can be really powerful as well. Then get involved in your local communities or the broader groups that are involved in cardiac arrest, resuscitation, survivorship, recognition, response. There's a lot of great opportunity. Thank you so much, you guys, for your attention and your questions. They were great. I want to thank our panelists, all of them for bringing such a great breadth of information and experience for me and I hope for everyone today. Jackie, I want to ask one last question as a closing. You mentioned that there was no AED on that field at that time. Is there now? Yeah. One of the things I've done post-recovery is advocate for AEDs in the field, or AEDs in the community. I went back to that township that I was coaching soccer that day and said, why don't you have them? You're a pretty affluent community, why don't you have them? They were talking about risks and this and all this other issue. Then we started to give the data and now they do. Now they have AEDs on those fields. It's unfortunate, especially we talk about what happened in NFL. Most of the time when you see what happened to DeMar Hamlin happens to 12-year-old boys on a baseball field. Putting an AED where those 12-year-old boys are is not a really hardship for a lot of our townships to do and it's important.

Jacqueline McGlone

cardiac arrest survivor

CPR

stents

rehabilitation

AEDs