Kayla Burt- Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survivor

New Year’s Eve will forever be a day of remembrance for me, for the rest of my life. In addition to ringing in a new year; I celebrate my second chance at life.

It was 2002, a day like any other. I was a starting sophomore guard on the women’s basketball team at the University of Washington and in the prime of my athletic career. Being a young athlete in my early 20’s with no prior medical history, I felt invincible to medical hardship; oblivion to what would nearly kill me in the blink of an eye. A new reality in the journey of my life had just completely changed who I would be forever.

Being New Year’s Eve, I had eight teammates at my house. We were just watching movies, eating junk food, and apparently looking through my high school yearbooks. I have no recollection of what takes place next, but I have amazing friends (I call them my sisters) who took over a situation that transcends my comprehension.

It was 11:15pm, I had gone upstairs to brush my teeth, get ready for bed, and do everything in my power to stay awake until midnight to ring in the New Year. Earlier that day was entirely too normal for me. Woke up, had a nice 3 hour practice, lifted weights, and drove my teammates to the store to get a movie and food to relax for the evening. We didn’t have a particularly good practice under Coach’s standards ,so she called for an 8:00am practice New Year’s Day. That was early for us.

About 11:23pm I go and sit down on my bed next to one of my teammates when I nonchalantly state that I felt light headed. Next thing she knows, I collapse off of my bed. She thought I was joking but when I landed face down in an awkward position; she quickly realized this was a serious situation. She called for the rest of my teammates that were downstairs, that something had happened to me and that I might be having a seizure.

This is when my sisters all play a vital role in ultimately saving my life. When they rolled me over, my eyes were rolled in the back of my head, I was completely purple, and they said I was simply “lifeless”. Everyone played a part. One was on the phone with 911, one going door to door for help, another moving furniture for EMS personnel, and two more performing CPR. Without any one piece, I don’t believe I’d be here today.

Paramedics were able to shock me out of ventricular fibrillation and into a normal sinus rhythm where I lay in a coma for 15 hours at UW Medical Center. Six days later I had an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) placed in my chest to shock my heart back to a normal rhythm should another arrhythmia ever occur again. I had to hang up the basketball shoes in that moment but I also realized how fortunate and blessed I was that I was even alive.

To this day, experts are unsure of why I went into cardiac arrest that night and they may never know. Today, I live a completely normal life that involves daily exercise, basketball, biking, running, and anything else I set my mind to do! It has become my passion and I believe it’s what I was placed here to do, to now do what I can to raise awareness to those young athletes who may have prevented to them what happened to me.

Kayla graduated from the University of Washington in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication.

She is a former employee of Hope Heart and is currently working as an EMT.


Original Published Link Kayla Burt- Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survivor

#CPR, #EMS, #EMT, #ICD, #MySecondChanceAtLife #Heart/Cardiac

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