In a heartbeat

In the middle of the night, 28 year-old Cindy Heigl found herself having emergency surgery without anesthesia to replace a faulty pacemaker. Awake, bruised, and scared, she uttered the only prayer she could muster: “Help me, help me, God,” Then, “Fix me, fix me…”

Now, Heigl’s book, In a Heartbeat: My Miraculous Experience of Sudden Cardiac Arrest recounts her experience in 2014 when a wire in her pacemaker broke, causing her to flatline twice, for nearly 5 minutes. Heigl, who was born with a congenital heart disease called Complete Heart Block, grew up familiar with pediatric cardiologists. At age 14, her first pacemaker was installed and she underwent seven subsequent surgeries.

As a young patient, Heigl’s pediatric specialist instructed her not live in fear, despite the obvious challenge of being a high school student with a pacemaker. “She told me there was a chance that the wire could break, but that the odds of that happening were less than 1%,” says Heigl. “She said I would know if something was wrong.”

Ironically, when Heigl’s wire broke in 2014, Heigl didn’t suspect her pacemaker at first.

“I feel pretty stupid when I say, ‘My life-saving medical device stopped functioning and I felt sick and it never crossed my mind that that was the problem,’” she says, but Heigl was in Las Vegas for work at the time, and she attributed feeling “not quite right” to allergies, and cigarette smoke from the casinos. She flew home to California, and even worked through the pain enough to pick up her husband, Jeff, from the airport later the same night. The next day, still not feeling well, she went shopping with her friend.

Heigl’s friend was concerned.

“I remember her saying, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” recalls Heigl. “I finally took my pulse and it was 40 [beats per minute]. My pacemaker doesn’t let it go below 60. I’d had a pacemaker for 15 years, and I’d never felt my pulse go below 60. So I called my doctor.”

Once admitted to the ICU, Heigl still didn’t feel overly concerned. “We had this supernatural sense of peace,” she says. “We should’ve freaked out.”

Heigl was in the ICU with her husband by her side when she flatlined.

“My husband Jeff caught me. He said that it was chaos,” she says. “My monitors started making flat tones. Nurses started screaming for help. He said 25 or 30 people came into the room within about 40 seconds. They were all doing something different. Chest compressions were the most violent thing he’d ever seen. He said the guy doing chest compressions was 6’2 and 210 pounds and his feet came off the floor, and they were doing the breathing bag and they gave me shots of adrenaline and atropine. Just when they started talking about brain damage and oxygen, and how it gets really bad after 2-1/2 minutes, that’s when I woke back up.”

Fifteen minutes later, Heigl flatlined once again. This time, the nurses were ready. They resuscitated her within 1-1/2 minutes.

‘This Is Not Your End’

Heigl’s book goes into detail about those harrowing minutes when she was in cardiac arrest. Surrounded by chaos and confusion in the ICU, Heigl experienced a peaceful feeling of being on a sandy ocean floor in beautiful, crystal clear water.

“I was in a place not of this world,” says Heigl. “What I felt was pure love. There was no pain, anxiety, or fear. I could feel my hair floating around my face and I could hear God saying, ‘I know the number of hairs on your head and the number of stars in the sky…and I’m here with you. Don’t be afraid. This is not your end.’

“I knew I was dying and that I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t care,” she says. “I didn’t want to get out of where I was. I didn’t feel like I was in a foreign place.”

Today, Heigl leads an active life with her new pacemaker. She feels fortunate that her doctor in California turned out to be the exact person she needed to do the risky eight-hour procedure that saved her life.

“I couldn’t have lived in any other era other than the one I’m living in right now,” she says. “If I was born five or ten years earlier, there would not have been the technology to catch my disease. I wouldn’t have had as comfortable a life. If I had been born 15 years earlier, I would’ve died.”

‘A Miracle’

Heigl, who has lived in Huntley with her husband for the past two years (most of the events in the book take place in California, where they lived at the time), never had aspirations of being an author. But after her recovery and having conversations with her mother, she knew that her experience of being alive after nearly 5 minutes without oxygen and being surrounded by the right people at the right time was nothing short of a miracle.

“I started thinking about families who have lost a loved one, who think about their final moments,” she says. “At one point, my mom started crying, and said, ‘How would I know? If you had died and didn’t come back, I would have no idea what you experienced. I would think that you hurt for days, that you died alone, and I wasn’t there for you. I would live with that for the rest of my life.’”

Heigl says she feels a responsibility to share her story through her book.

“I didn’t experience the fear in the hospital that I should’ve felt,” she says. “I know I was protected. It’s not a morbid death and dying book. It’s filled with peace, hope, and comfort.”

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