Kathleen Wyatt - The Social Superpower

Cambridge Evening News, 11 January 1995
Published with kind permission of Reach plc

The ambulance crew tried twice to restart my heart, but it was not until they tried the more powerful defibrillator in the hospital that it started beating again. Tonys guess was that my heart had stopped for about ten minutes. I was in a coma for thirty-six hours, and when I came to, I had lost my memory.

I responded to my name and recognised friends and family, but if someone had asked me their names or why they were there, I would have been blank. In the subsequent months and without any sense of it, I started learning how to be me again.

The first few weeks were uncertain. My brain had swelled and the specialists were unsure if there would be any long-term effects. The amnesia lingered. Doctors, nurses, loved ones came in and out of the different rooms I was in, but I could make no sense of it. Why was I there?

I stayed in hospital for six weeks until the medical team operated on me and fitted a heart device. It was an implantable cardioverter defibrillator and it would intervene if ever my heart went into another irregular rhythm. The main box with the battery sat just below my left rib cage, its wires passing through my veins and into my heart. It meant I no longer needed constant medical supervision. If my heart stopped again, I would have back-up power. Not long after Valentines Day, I left hospital with what felt like a new heart.

I have had three other heart devices since, as the technology improved and older models needed replacing. None of them has ever gone off and I have never since had a problem with my heart. Despite numerous tests over many years, my case remains medically unexplained. In 2010, I had the last defibrillator removed. The surgeries had started to take a greater toll on my health than the benefits I got from this highly sophisticated back-up plan. I had been lucky, lucky beyond belief but now my body was protesting.

What caused the cardiac arrest? The specialists could never find a clear explanation, but back then, the name they gave it was Sudden Death Syndrome. The adult version of cot death.

I returned to university and slowly resumed my studies and my life. Five years later, I wrote a piece about it in The Times. I had just started at the newspaper, first doing work experience, then on the arts desk, and it was my first lead feature. It was a big moment. But although I told the story as carefully as I could, I left something out. Something significant. Fear lurked behind my tidy, journalistic words.

I lied then, as I had before. Guilt and shame silenced me. Because on New Years Eve 1994, ten days before my sudden death, I had taken class-A drugs at a party. Could that have been the cause? I did not write about it.

When I was rushed to hospital, my friends had a difficult choice to make. Should they tell my horrified parents about the drugs? Would that knowledge give my parents comfort, or hurt them even more? Tests revealed nothing in my blood and the only damage to my heart was likely to have been caused by the collapse. The medical team chalked it up as an unknown.

My friends had summoned their courage and told the doctors about the drugs but decided not to tell my parents. And because I was over eighteen, they could also ask the doctors not to tell them. The lie was brave and kind, and it was decided by a group of friends. When the doctors were asked to keep the truth quiet, it became an institutional lie. A silence that heals. Soon it would become my lie too.

As I woke, and began to recover, parts of my personality seemed to return. But it took time. Those close to me had to put up with the wearing routine of telling me what had happened, seeing some kind of understanding dawn over my face, only for me to then look puzzled and greet them again with unfeigned pleasure.

How lovely to see you!

Silence in the room.

But why are you here? And so it went on.