Alicia Bravo
I was 37 and had a sudden cardiac arrest and I had no idea why. I had been training for triathlons and was in the best shape of my life. Just six days before, I had done a mile swim race at Lake Harriet … it’s insane.
As an emergency room nurse at a Minneapolis trauma hospital for more than 20 years, Alicia Bravo is passionate about increasing awareness about the importance of bystander CPR to help save lives. Alicia never could’ve imagined however, that CPR would one day save her own life. It happened one day in July 2017 when she experienced sudden cardiac arrest while swimming at her parents’ lake home in the small Wisconsin town where she grew up.
“I was 37 and had a sudden cardiac arrest and I had no idea why,” said Alicia. “I had been training for triathlons and was in the best shape of my life. Just six days before, I had done a mile swim race at Lake Harriet … it’s insane.”
Just five minutes into her training swim, Alicia’s heart went into V-fib (ventricular fibrillation), a life-threatening heart rhythm that occurs when the heart’s lower chambers (ventricles) quiver, or fibrillate, instead of contracting (or beating) normally. V-fib can cause sudden cardiac arrest (where the heart stops beating) and is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death. Thankfully, her father, husband and the sheriff all took turns performing manual CPR before EMS personnel were able to hook her up to a LUCAS machine, an external mechanical device that delivers consistent and uninterrupted automatic chest compressions during CPR.
“I just feel like I'm really lucky; I'm thankful to be alive,” said Alicia. “I try to do a lot of outreach teaching people CPR because without it, the outcome would've been completely different. I had CPR for 20 minutes and today, I'm totally normal and living a normal life.”
Alicia eventually learned she has Long QT syndrome, a relatively rare and often inherited heart rhythm disorder. Long QT is characterized by fast, abnormal heartbeats, which increases the risk for fainting, seizures and sudden cardiac arrest. Alicia had two different types of stress tests and also genetic testing, which showed no genetic markers for Long QT.
