One night in July 2022, Casalan Bittle, a 47-year-old single mother who lives in the suburbs of Northbrook, said: I started feeling indigestion, but I attributed it to the hamburger I ate the night before.
Bittle put her children to bed and went to sleep, but woke up a few hours later feeling nauseous. So she went to the bathroom and tried to throw up.
But that never happened.
“As I lay down on the bathroom floor, I gradually became more and more nauseous and a little sweaty,” she said, recalling the 90 minutes or so she sat in the bathroom. Bittle tried to get up to take a shower, but she realized she didn't have the strength to get up from the floor.
Suddenly she started to panic.
Mr. Bittle managed to stand up, but this left him with chest discomfort and shortness of breath. Somehow, she ended up with her mother, who happened to be visiting her at the time. Then, out of nowhere, a single mother of two was knocked unconscious for five minutes.
Paramedics arrived and rushed Mr. Bittle to an area hospital. There, doctors revealed startling news. She had had a heart attack.
“The last thing I remember, I don't recommend it, is that I was defibrillated.” She recalled this in an interview with TODAY.com. “I remember being electrocuted alive.”
Bittle was not yet 50 years old, had no known health conditions, and exercised regularly.
She has also climbed Mount Kilamanjaro and just a few months ago had her annual medical check-up, which included an electrocardiogram. The doctors who treated her mother determined that the main artery in her mother's heart was 100% blocked. This is often referred to as: Widow Maker Heart Attack.
A single mother of two was clinging to life.
The last thing I remember is being defibrillated, which I don't recommend. I remember being electrocuted alive.
Kasaran Bittle, mother of two from Northbrook
Doctors intubated her, fitted a stent and a temporary heart pump, and installed an extracorporeal membrane oxygenator. Also called ECMO. Dr. Bow (Ben) Chan, a cardiologist at the University of Chicago Medicine who treated Bittle, said it was “the most powerful form of life support available to a person.”
“From a cardiac standpoint, this was basically the worst disease one could think of,” he says.
Bittle's family was told their goodbyes and told that a heart transplant appeared to be their only option. Doctors were concerned about how much of Bittle's brain function remained intact after suffering multiple cardiac arrests during his hospital stay.
She was placed on the emergency transplant list and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in hopes that a heart would become available.
“Very miraculously, and I understand it was pretty crazy, my heart was like, 'Okay, we might not need a transplant right now. Let's wake her up.' I recovered to the point where I thought,” Bittle said. .
Within a few days, she was taken off ECMO and her heart pump, but she hit another hurdle. It turned out that a blood clot had developed in both of Bittle's left and right femoral arteries, cutting off circulation to her legs. She was immediately taken to surgery, where surgeons saved her leg and repaired her artery.
From there, things calmed down a bit as she focused on her recovery.
Bittle was hospitalized for about two weeks, followed by six weeks of outpatient rehabilitation and another 18 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation. She also wore a life vest, a wearable defibrillator, for 90 days.
In February 2023, she had a particularly difficult time in outpatient rehabilitation.
“It just tickled my chest,” she said. “Then I went to cardiac rehabilitation and was walking on the treadmill, which felt harder than the day before.”
Doctors took great care to put her through a stress test. The results were “not something that worried her too much, but it was kind of interesting,” Bittle explained. So, again out of an abundance of caution, her doctor ordered further tests, which revealed that her main artery was 70% blocked.
If it wasn't discovered, it could have caused another heart attack.
While it is not uncommon for a person to have a second heart attack after surviving the first one, it is unusual for a new heart attack to occur under these circumstances, Chong said.
“At that point, she was taking all the appropriate medications to prevent another heart attack,” he explained.
Doctors offered Bittle the option of robotic heart surgery instead of open-heart surgery. Unlike open-heart surgery, this approach does not require the doctor to actually stop the heart. Additionally, the patient can go home and return to normal life within her 1-2 days.
Almost a year after the robotic surgery, Bittle is doing “amazing,” she said. “Most days, you would never know.”
She still has heart damage and takes medication every day, and some days she gets so unwell that she needs to rest.
“I will be a heart failure patient for the rest of my life, but my recovery has been amazing,” she said.
The closest reminder of her journey to health is the scar it leaves behind, but even that is a source of connection.
She sometimes compares the scar to her son, who had heart surgery at 10 months old for a congenital disease.
“We are both warriors at heart,” she said.
In a previous interview with the University of Chicago Medicine, Bittle acknowledged that he had “survived an unsurvivable situation.”
“…I survived an unsurvivable situation, right?” she said. “I have access to extraordinary medical care and rehabilitation. It's a privilege and I'm very lucky. And I'm going to live a long life.”
Looking back, Bittle wishes she had known how common heart attacks were in women, and that women can have more subtle symptoms than men. Regardless of gender, the most common symptom is chest pain.
According to Chung, many people are hesitant to call anything. pain. It can manifest as discomfort, tightness, pressure, or it can manifest as a nagging sensation that doesn't go away.
“Many women think, 'I must be lying on the ground holding my chest, like you see in the movies,' but it could be something more subtle,” NBC Medical Contributor explained Dr. Tara Narula. Her TODAY show segment on February 1, 2024.
other subtle signs Possible indicators of a heart attack include the unusual indigestion and sudden nausea Bittle experienced, shortness of breath, and shooting pains in the jaw, back, arms, and shoulders. women are more likely Chung explained that men develop these symptoms earlier than men, which are often overlooked.
Symptoms of a heart attack in women include:
- Chest pain, discomfort, heaviness, tightness, or tightness
- Pain in the jaw, neck, shoulders, and upper back
- Nausea, vomiting, indigestion
- shortness of breath
- extreme fatigue or fainting
Research shows that women also more likely to die after a heart attack than menmay be due to delays in diagnosis and treatment.
The bottom line is that if you have symptoms that are unusual for you, you should see your doctor, especially if they don't go away, Chung explained.
“You don't need to go to the emergency room, but it's probably best to see your doctor or go to an emergency room just to get a diagnosis,” he says.
As Mr. Bittle says, “Don't think you're doing something stupid. Get help right away.”
Bittle said she feels “grateful and amazed” because she knows everything that has survived, and won't let the negativity around her drag her down.
“It's not worth spending energy on the negative, because I've spent all my energy on staying alive,” she explained.
