Meet Nancy Capelle

           

Nancy Capelle, EMT, CET

         I usually discuss sudden cardiac arrests as they apply to Sudden Cardiac Arrhythmias, or heart rhythm disturbances.  Today I would like to tell you about another type of cardiac issue which can also cause arrhythmia and sudden death.

               Nancy Capelle was a Connecticut wife and mother who commuted to a job in the corporate world. She loved her job and it meant a good deal to her.  One day, at only forty, while she was home with her two young daughters, she developed some chest pains.  Nancy is an educated woman, and had a history of esophageal spasm, which in itself can be quite uncomfortable, and so she sat at the computer expecting this to pass.  Her chest pain continued to radiate to the back, and to her left arm and to her jaw.  She was a healthy, beautiful woman of forty, who was of normal weight, and who liked to run for recreation with her husband.  She googled her symptoms before eventually calling an ambulance.  Nancy experienced a full cardiac arrest in the ambulance while the ambulance turned out of her driveway.  A diligent paramedic first tried a precordial thump, which was ineffective and then used a hospital grade defibrillator which saved Nancy's life.

               The cause of Nancy's cardiac arrest was not high cholesterol, or a bad diet, or stress, but is something called spontaneous coronary artery dissection  (SCAD)       SCAD afflicts women 80% of the time, and has a 70% mortality rate.  Yes, that's correct. 70% of the time, afflicted patients die.

             Fortunately for everyone, as a result of her experience, Nancy has devoted herself no longer to the corporate world, but to CPR, AED education and to educating others concerning cardiac sudden death of all varieties.  Nancy is now a motivational speaker and the founder of Cardiac Companion LLC.

             If anyone, particularly those in the US Northeast would like to talk to Nancy, for television or radio appearances, or as an excellent organizational or corporate speaker, this is contact information for her.  I think Daniel would wholeheartedly approve of the manner in which she is spending her time !

  

• nancy@cardiaccompanion.com

On Mother's Day

         

        I have explained in the past that Mother's Day, even before Daniel's passing never held any particular fascination for me.  I believe, as my own mother did, that I should be treated with respect and consideration the year round, and not simply honored on one allocated day.  I already have a birthday, and my family values me already.  The meager offerings of a child should therefore be spent on things they need.  Of course, following Daniel's sudden and unexpected departure, Mother's Day became a day of endurance and often, of sorrow.  Since most of our kids are grown or near it, they have each chosen to do something to perhaps soften the difficulty of the day.  I received a private recognition from each of my children.  My husband busied himself doing some chores I needed done here on the farm, and I spent the day doing exactly what I wanted to at home, which entailed organizing my disaster supply room. (Something I really need to be doing as it entails giving some things to my daughter at her home, and both rotating some stock and using other items.)   When I was finished, I spent extra time with the dogs and the horses and the alpacas.   This day, there were no tears. It was calm and I mothered both people and animals.

           My balance was upset very slightly this morning when a friend sent me an article written by a Harvard pediatrician who had lost a son.  I read her thoughts about how difficult a day it is and how she copes.  With that, the tears came. Oddly, what I took from it is that even a Harvard pediatrician can lose her child.   I suppose that in the deepest recesses of my mind I have wondered that if I had stuck to my original plan of being a physician, that I would somehow have detected Daniel's predilection for arrhythmia and sudden death and somehow have interceded.  Perhaps I have wondered that if by being a nurse, I missed the snippet of information that would have allowed me to prevent Daniel's gorgeous light of a life slip through my CPR performing hands on the bathroom floor on that terrible, terrible day five and a half years ago now.  Perhaps a pediatrician losing her child is the nod I need to realize that sometimes terrible things simply happen in this life no matter how much we love someone, and no matter how much we would be willing to do to keep them here on Earth with us.

            I hope your day was pleasant, or at least without palpable sobs.  Most years will be better.
            

Happy Eighteenth Birthday, Daniel

 

  If we had been lucky enough to have Daniel remain on Earth, this week he would have been eighteen years old.  Daniel, we have spent six Christmases without your being here in the flesh and five of your last birthdays without your smiling face. We celebrated these holidays quietly, but we still celebrated them. There are so many things I would like to have done, and had you with me while we were doing them.

Perhaps by now you would have grown in to liking sushi !

          You were so bright at 12 1/2 and had been looking at colleges with an eye to going early. I find it hard to imagine what you might be doing now had you stayed.  Perhaps you would be working on a Ph d by now.
In any event, as you know, we are all still here. We still celebrate your birthdays and the holidays with a cake and a quiet family celebration.  Please know that you are loved and remembered by your people who remain on Earth.  I love you, Bug.

Happy 18th Daniel !

 

A cake of the cosmos is probably the most fitting.

Last evening, I remembered you by making a yellow Bundt cake, and then when it was out of the pan, drizzling it with lots of lemon curd.  Your siblings thoroughly enjoyed it.

Once cooled and thickened, lemon curd makes an excellent topping to cakes and cheesecakes or as a generous glaze to a Bundt cake.  I know you would have loved this.

Daniel would want me to give you a recipe for the British Standard Lemon Curd:
    (No, you really don't need salt)

• 3 oz. (6 Tbs.) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
• 3/4cup sugar-1 cup depending upon taste
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp. grated lemon zest 

Using a carrot peeler, remove the zest of 3 lemons. . Put the zest in a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the sugar and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar.

Cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Mix the eggs with a fork and add them to the mixture. one at a time, and then add the lemon juice. . Mix until combined.

Pour the mixture into a 2 quart saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool and then refrigerate.   I have done this very carefully using a microwave.   A percentage of the thickening does occur while cooling.

This is an excellent drizzle for shortbread, scones, pound cake, pastry tarts, cheesecake, and is divine on pancakes.

Calories per tablespoon: About 50

    Happy Birthday, Daniel !

I don't believe that Daniel ever heard the music of Sarah Slean, but she has a straight shot to some of the music of Heaven.

Happy Easter, Daniel

    

I think the chocolate buttons are your favorite.

  When I think of Easter, I think not only of the religious significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but I think of you.  I don't think any of my children enjoyed Easter as much as you did.  Each year, the snowy Winter would give way to crocuses sometimes peeking out in the snow, and then to seeing bursts of forsythia.  Then, the rural tradition of ducks, rabbits,  and chicks that would appear in each hardware or feed store.  We had rabbits when you were born and since we always had them, they weren't a driving force for you. Each year you wanted to take some ducks or chicks home.   Thank Heaven one year we brought home ducks, and another year a couple of years later, we brought home chicks.  I am glad you had the joy of these experiences. We still have some of the more long lived creatures that we bought when you were still on Earth, and we certainly still have many of their descendants. Of course, some of them have already joined you at Home.

I love you and my Dad wider than the oceans and deeper than the seas, and I always will.

            I remember our annual family Easter Egg Hunts.  We would have these on the Saturday after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday.  I would arm each of you with an Easter basket, and hide plastic Easter eggs, filled either with wrapped treats or with coins.   You loved the hunt probably more than the others. I still remember your bubbling enthusiasm for the annual hunt.  Did you know I have kept all those baskets ?    Last year, I saw some plastic Easter eggs that were fashioned as dinosaur eggs !   I thought of you as I snatched them up.  The outer shell is fashioned in green with a tough textured exterior.  These would be very tough to find in one of our hunts, against the green grass !   I will hold on to them. Eventually I will discover what to do with them.

           This year there will be no hunt.  With each of your siblings in their twenties except for our beloved adoptee, who is almost there also, there are no children or even teens to celebrate in quite this way.  Still, with the cool air, pollen, verdant grass, I remember so clearly, as if it were yesterday, or the day before, your joy in the celebration of Easter. And if I haven't said it recently, thank you for coming to Earth to be my youngest son. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, despite the fact that our time together ended sadly.   I love you wider than the oceans, and deeper than the seas.

The grass is deep enough for the hunt !

Our posts on prior Easters:



 http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2012/04/easter-recollections.html

http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2011/04/easter-in-2011.html

http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2010/04/cracked-easter.html

http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2009/04/salvaged-egg-hunt.



Concerning Daniel's ducks:

http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2013/10/daffney-duck.html

Tomorrow Might be Too Late

(Photo: www.nbc29.com  )

 
          Yesterday, I drove a relative to a major urban medical center for some specialized health care. We were there for most of the day, and there was a great deal of waiting involved.  At one point, I saw a large family with a boy who reminded me a bit of Daniel, at least physically.   He looked to be about ten, and his family had been to one of the clinics and were making their way through the maze that is the medical center, for the long trip home.  The sprawling hospital complex is adjacent to a number of trains, and the boy wanted to go to see the trains. Of course, the boy should be able to take twenty minutes to see the trains come in and go out. Of course, the family wishes to get out of the city and have the bulk of their own long travel done before rush hour hits.  So many times, we as adults, forget how fragile our lives and the lives of our children really are.  So many times, we are embroiled in what we think is the real work of the world, when in fact, the stop and small the roses moments our family member needs, might be their last chance.  The boy kept asking.    Eventually, he said, "Can't we just look at the trains ?"   They kept walking.   I wanted to cry. I remembered in that moment, times when Daniel had exactly that tone.  There were so many things he wished to do, and although we did some of them, there were many things as simple as trains at the medical center that were left for some future time, and then, of course, his future, and our own was simply suspended.

       I am not suggesting we turn all of our children into indulged brats, but I am suggesting that when time is all you have to lose, that we hear their cries to do a particular thing, and try to make time when we can.  Tomorrow might be too late.





Steven Curtis Chapman                                  More to This Life

    

Olivia's Heart Project

               

  I first saw a picture of Olivia Hoff on a webpage which memorialized the sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who passed  due to QT syndromes, a sudden and unexpected heart rhythm disturbance, often in an otherwise healthy person, which all too often produces a sudden death.   Olivia was only fourteen years old at her passing in 2004.

    Daniel joined Olivia on that same memorial page in 2008.   As I looked at each of the pictures of these people, I felt sorrow.  I knew only too well that the departure of each of them will leave a permanent hole in their families, an awful lot like a sudden sink hole.  Regardless of the faith of these families, the loss from their families lives on Earth will be palpable and permanent.

     I was fortunate however to have contact this year with Olivia's mother,  Corinne Ruiz.   Corinne has worked hard to create a living and working memorial to Olivia which may well help to prevent some of the additional losses of children, teens and adults to undiagnosed heart rhythm disturbances.

    This is the story of what happened to Olivia, in her mother's words.

     Corinne Ruiz founded Olivia's Heart Project, which exists to raise awareness of the 400,000 deaths each year from a sudden cardiac death.  10,000 of these annual deaths are children.   Corinne works hard to educate the public, be an advocate for learning CPR, and also to place AEDs (automated emergency defibrillators) in as many public places as possible.  She is also a co-organizer of heart screenings in her community and beyond.   An arrhythmic death is not a heart attack. It is a disturbance in the rhythm of the heart which may be due to malformation, an undiagnosed physical condition, or sometimes only an episodic or hard to catch alteration in an EKG.


      Olivia's Heart Project


        I have tried to bring awareness of this issue following Daniel's passing.   I think that Olivia's mom, Corinne has done an incredible job in terms of bringing awareness of this issue and of bringing AEDs starting in her own community,and reaching beyond.    I know that Olivia would be so proud of her, just as I am sure Olivia's brother is also.


Olivia's Heart Project Newsletter for April, 2014---  Good information here 

A Spring Letter to Daniel

          Daniel,

              I often go long stretches of time in acceptance of God's plan that you were called to Him and the rest of us are to remain here on Earth for some undetermined time.   I take great comfort in that you are at home with God and that my father, whom you knew well here, is with you, and that there are other relatives you did not know here on Earth who are there and who care about you.   Most of the time I am well, and I busy myself with the work on your animals, and the work of launching your brothers and sister from our nest.   We still mention you and laugh at things you said and did while you were here.
            Every once in awhile I see a child, or a child sees me, and sometimes they seem to seek me out.  Sometimes it's a child who has that inexplicable something that you so clearly had.  It was an energy, an exuberance, a joy of living that most people, even most children do not have.  You always enjoyed everything, from a Summer Day, to a quick rain, or an ice cream cone, almost as if you had read about it, knew all about it, but had not yet experienced it for yourself.  In those moments where one of those children talks to me, or sometimes even hugs me, I am reminded that the energy that you had returns to God, but that there is still joy and wonderful expectation in the world.  I also take these encounters to mean that God is allowing you to send greetings in the form of a child who is already here on Earth.
             Sometimes, that same hurt that came in the beginning sneaks up on me.  Sometimes, my soul feels raw and so terribly deprived that chronologically speaking, I have not seen you in the flesh for five years and four months.  In so many ways it seems as if we just spoke, and then in others, so much has happened that I want to share with you, even though, I know that you know most of it.
            I just want to tell you that I really appreciate seeing you and Dad in dreams.  I am doing my best here. Sometimes, with all the strife in the world, I am almost relieved that you are safe at home, and then other times, I feel a dull ache that so many things I hoped you would do on Earth will not happen here.  Poor Earth, Daniel went home.   You were so good at prayers, and I know you have continued to be.  Please pray for your siblings in a country and a world which has changed very quickly since your departure.  You and Dad are never far from my thoughts and my love for you both is a constant.  Love to you both !

I remember being encouraged by this song in the months which followed Daniel's passing from Earth.

Prayers to Malaysia

   

(Graphic:www.fox19.com  )

   A few days ago, a Malaysian Air flight bound from Kuala Lampur to Beijing disappeared from radar.  More than two hundred people were aboard including two infants, and souls from all over the world.   The nations in that region of the world looked for the plane, but to no avail.   Possible oil on the ocean as seen from the air turned out not to be.  A possible door in the water turned out not to be. There has been great focus on two of the passengers of this flight who were in possession of stolen passports. One theory is that they intended to defect from their nation, Iran.

           The cellphones of some of the people on that flight were still sending signals as late as yesterday according to one news source. This would not be if the plane had crashed before its expected arrival in Beijing.

            For the moment, no one knows what happened.  The hope is that some type of a hijacking occurred and that the plane and its passengers have landed somewhere that is simply not yet known to the world.  And so, we know next to nothing about what has happened here.  Until we do, our prayers are for the people on the Malaysian Air flight that is missing, and certainly with their families who are certainly having a difficult time.  Prayers and best wishes to you all.




Update:    March 16, 2014

I would generally write an updated summary of all of the news from a variety of sources.  However, this time, the best analysis of the data we have can be found here:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?_r=0


Interesting Theoretical but Educated Suppositions:

http://mh370shadow.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68







          

The Severity of the Snowstorm

There is snow everywhere.

                   There have been years here in Virginia where I haven't worn an actual coat through the entire Winter. The Winter of 1989 was one of those years.  It was a bit like a perpetual Spring.   Given this year, however, it's hard to believe we are in about the same zone.

                     This year we have had multiple ice storms, power outages, and deep snow.  The drifted snow was so deep in one storm this season, that the horses couldn't leave the barn, and spent the day in stalls listening to the only station that would still come in, NPR.    Today, it's March and overnight we had freezing rain, and then we were expected to have a foot of snow.   My husband headed off to work and came back when the truck moved sideways on the mountain road rather than moving forward.  He will work from home today.   James had an appointment with his doctor this morning which had been rescheduled the result of an ice storm about two weeks ago.  We had still planned to go today thinking that the interstate would be clear by the time our appointment rolled around.  The doctors office initially had planned to open late, and then as our appointment neared, they placed a recording on their answering machine which said that they had closed today "due to the severity of the snowstorm".

                    This is a bit ironic when you consider that the Wal-Mart and many other stores had already discounted gloves, hats, shovels, pet safe salt crystals for walkways, and all manner of windshield scrapers and brushes.  It's a good thing I have lots of tea.

                As I think of the birds eating from the bird feeder, I am a little sad.   Daniel loved the snow and playing in it. It seems to me that he didn't get nearly enough playtime in the snow in the short twelve and a half  years he was stationed here on Earth.    I love you, Daniel.   Please tell my Dad I love him too. I miss both of you, every day, and most especially during snowstorms !

Updates on Ukraine

           

Ukrainian police guarding the Crimean Parliament building.( Photograph: the guardian  )

         It's been one week since I last mentioned Ukraine in a post here, and frankly I am overwhelmed at the prospect of reducing all of the complex happenings there in the last week, and reporting to you as much as I know, without giving as much import to these happenings as they deserve.
              First of all, in most places in Ukraine, due to the civil and not so civil unrest, shops are closed. So, it could be exceedingly difficult right now to buy food, medicine, or something you find you need for a baby, child, or person who has become sick or injured in the past week.   Please know that all of you are in our prayers, and that people in the US are praying for your safety and your delivery from these complex challenges.

              The US does propagandize a percentage of the news which is shown here, particularly when it's international news.  Viktor Yanukovych, whom I mentioned in the last post, has fled Ukraine and gone to Russia with his family citing personal danger. He still claims to be rightful leader.  Ukraine's Parliament has issued warrants for his arrest for the murder of protesters.  Meanwhile, Ukraine's Parliament has gone about forming a new government.Ukraine has a new acting president Oleksandr Turchynov.   This looks good overall, but then there was additional news.

               Crimea, a section of Ukraine has a great many ethnic Russians.  In the tensions which have emerged this week, some of them have been shouting, "Crimea is Russia !"    In addition, Russia has mobilized armed fighters, helicopters, and ships and sent them to Ukraine.   Mr. Putin's official word is that "These are routine exercises" and he has also said that Russian troops are there in order to calm tensions in the region.  However, armed Russian soldiers have taken over two airports in Crimea.  Of course, all of this sounds reminiscent of Russia's occupation of Georgia some six years ago where they said they weren't there, and continued to take ground and destroy buildings.

               My interest is that families remain safe during whatever transitions occur there. May Ukrainians stay safe and retain their sovereign borders.    As I watch instability and civil unrest in Ukraine, I can't help but wonder how long it will be before civil unrest comes to the United States, the result of potentially economic collapse, or perhaps the continued loss of our freedoms by our present executive branch, without adequate pushback from our legislative or judicial branches.  I have friends that are both Ukrainian and Russian, and I wish all of you to be safe.    Best wishes, Ukrainian families who are in turmoil, please stay safe.