Quick CPR at birthday sleep-over saved teen with rare heart disorder
Published: March 6, 2006
Time stopped for a Bellevue father when his little girl’s heart ceased beating.
“It’s not looking good,” a firefighter said to Larry Lustig. “Would you like to talk to a chaplain?”
His 13-year-old daughter was dying — and no one knew why.
Minutes later, a shot of a powerful stimulant and multiple defibrillator shocks restored Selena Lustig’s heartbeat.
“I don’t know how long she was gone, three or four minutes,” Lustig said. “Time just kind of stopped. There really was no time. It’s hard to describe.
“The minute they said we have a heartbeat, I was saying, `I’ll make the deal. I don’t care what she comes back like. I’m not going to say “why me?” I just want her back. Just let her live.”’
Returned to school last week
Selena did survive, and returned to classes last week at Issaquah Middle School, a month after going into cardiac arrest at a sleep-over birthday party at her friend Samantha Mele’s house.
Doctors diagnosed Selena with Long QT Syndrome, a rare, hereditary disorder of the heart’s electrical rhythms.
Former University of Washington basketball player Kayla Burt also was diagnosed with Long QT after her heart stopped in 2002. Burt’s teammates applied CPR, saving her life.
Burt, who later learned she did not have Long QT but a different heart problem, visited Selena in the hospital.
The fact that Selena was at the birthday party may have been what saved her life. No one at the Lustig house knows CPR, but fortunately, Samantha’s mother, Kim Mele, does.
About 10 girls stayed the night with Samantha, who was turning 13. The girls watched the movie “13” and stuffed themselves with cake.
Cardiac arrest was no joke
About 8:30 a.m., Selena went into cardiac arrest. She was making faces, “almost gurgling,” Lustig said. “They couldn’t tell (right away) if she was joking or not.”
When they realized she wasn’t playing, Samantha called 911 and got her mom.
Kim Mele was just about to get in the shower when her frantic daughter told her something was terribly wrong.
“Selena was totally purple,” Kim said. “It was horrifying.”
Kim performed CPR on Selena until the medics arrived. Kim didn’t understand the importance of her efforts until later.
“She really kept Selena alive and kept enough oxygen in there,” Lustig said.
“Everybody is telling me I saved her life, so I guess I did,” Kim said.
Selena’s parents were called by a girl at the party and quickly drove to the Mele family home.
Selena was transported to Children’s Hospital, where she was in a coma for several days.
Doctors placed Selena on an ice mattress, dropping her body temperature down to 90 degrees, so her “brain won’t work as hard,” Lustig said.
“By the end of the third day, she wasn’t awake, but we knew she could hear us,” Lustig said.
And after nine days, she was ready to go home.
“We’re blessed,” Lustig said. “She’s a miracle kid.”
After Selena’s diagnosis, Selena’s family went in for electrocardiograms, or EKGs, and it was determined that her father and older brother Daniel also have Long QT.
Both Larry and Daniel were taken off medication they had previously taken because it is considered dangerous for people with Long QT.
Daniel, 20, was prescribed Beta blockers, which blunt the surges of adrenaline that can trigger cardiac arrest in a person with Long QT.
Selena also was prescribed Beta blockers and fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. The device was planted under her skin, just below her collar bone.
The device is connected by wires to the upper and lower chambers of Selena’s heart.
“When it detects a chaotic heartbeat, the ICD gives her a shock,” Lustig said. “It also acts as a pacemaker.”
Selena will have the device for the rest of her life. Every five years doctors will have to change the batteries.
In the U.S., Long QT is estimated to affect about 50,000 people, or about 1 of every 6,000 people. The disease causes as many as 3,000 deaths each year, most of those children and young adults.
As the heart pumps blood, its electrical system needs to recharge between beats. In people with Long QT syndrome, the heart’s electrical system takes too long to recharge. This makes the heart susceptible to problematic rhythms, often referred to as arrhythmias, which can cause the heart to stop pumping blood throughout the body.
If the heart enters into one of these problematic rhythms it may cause a person to become lightheaded or faint. If the heart does not return to its normal rhythm, it may lead to death.
Maybe the scariest thing about Long QT is that many people die before they know they have it — because the primary symptoms are sudden loss of consciousness and sudden death.
The only ways to find out if someone has Long QT is with an EKG or a genetic blood test.
Selena, who had fainted once in October, was lucky, according to her dad, who has learned all he can about Long QT since his daughter’s near-death experience Jan. 29.
“Everything just kind of went right,” Larry said. “It had to for her to survive. Only like 5 percent of kids survive (events like Selena’s),” doctors told Lustig.
Selena initially had difficulties with her short-term memory.
While recovering in the hospital, she would ask about a get-well card on the wall, and then ask about it again a half-hour later, said her dad.
“She would read it and act as if she’d never seen it before,” Lustig said. “ It was like that all day, which happened to be Groundhog Day. It was easy to entertain her. I couldn’t run out of material.”
Selena said she’s happy to be getting back to her normal routine. She’s bored, she said, because she can’t play competitive sports. She was on a select basketball team and played tennis.
Selena and her friends from the birthday party plan to take CPR classes so they are prepared if something like this happens again.
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