>> So October 9th, that was the day that,
the last day that I ran.
That's when I ran on my own,
went too far into the woods,
and something told me like, turn around.
And I remember two nurses on either side of me
and they gave me sedation and they said,
you're going to go for a little ride.
They said, turn your head.
And they defibrillated me there.
(pensive music)
I don't know if I had much of a name for it back then.
I just knew I had supraventricular tachycardia.
And I know that was like the scary stuff.
They tried different medications, they weren't working.
And so we were running out of options.
And so then they introduced this defibrillator
and they told me it, you know, shocks the heart
when it gets too high and brings it back down.
And so I had a lot of anxiety with that.
I looked at everything so differently,
and I was constantly afraid of getting shocked.
Is it going to happen when I'm sleeping?
It's going to happen when I'm driving?
Yeah, that was a very, very lonely,
very, very scary time.
>> Ultimately, ARVD or ARVC was diagnosed
as the cause of her ventricular tachycardia.
And initially the focus of treatment
was on preventing sudden death
and treating these cardiac arrhythmias.
Back then, we didn't know that it's important
to restrict exercise when you're first diagnosed
and she continued running.
Well, we now know that if you continue exercising
once you get the disease,
your risk of heart failure and needing a heart transplant
goes up even further.
>> Now today, I'm getting my right heart catheter.
So they go in and make sure
everything's working and functioning.
>> ARVC is arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy,
or dysfunction, and it's a unique situation
where the right ventricle becomes very, very dilated
over time and dysfunctional.
There really isn't any other treatment
aside from a heart transplantation,
when it gets into it's end stages.
Christine is a very special individual.
She waited in the hospital for several months
and probably I had the most energy I've seen out of anybody.
Sometimes as a result of patient's, either genetics,
disease process, or as a sequelae of their heart disease,
other organs can become dysfunctional.
And for her, this disease process had taken a toll
on the liver as well.
And ultimately, the best thing for her
and the safest thing for her
was a combined heart liver transplantation.
>> When the heart doesn't pump blood well,
blood backs up.
And it backs up directly into the liver
and that's not good.
The liver gets congested.
If the heart is restored quickly to good function,
the liver can recover.
If the liver is subjected to that congestion
for months or years, the damage becomes permanent.
Heart-liver dual transplantation is very unusual.
You're taking the most complicated procedure
Johns Hopkins does, a heart transplant,
and you're combining it with the other
most complicated procedure Johns Hopkins does,
a liver transplant.
In fact, very few of these have been done in the world.
We have to have a donor that's an appropriate heart donor,
but is also an appropriate liver donor.
It's gotta be perfect.
The planets have to align.
>> The night of the surgery,
I remember we did like a little parade out of my unit,
into the surgical unit.
And then everything was pretty quick.
They put me under and then I just remember waking up,
the doctors telling me, you know,
you did really well.
When I first had it, I just couldn't sleep.
It was so loud, so powerful in my body,
and it was just amazing.
I was like, turn it off, turn it down.
It was, it was just crazy.
And it's amazing.
I go out and I jog.
I try to jog a little bit.
I'm working up to it.
And I'll get to this point where I'm just flushed
and back before, I'd check my pulse,
and I could feel if I was in a tachycardia,
and now I'll check it.
There's no extra beat.
It's not up real high.
And then coming down, it's normal.
Now, without the defibrillator and without the ARVD,
There's so much I want to do.
You know, just, just there's no limit
to what I can do and what I want to do.
And so the list can go on.
It's, it's fabulous.
(calm happy music)