Can you die from a broken heart? Heck yeah! At least that is what a 50 year old women found out while visiting her sister-in-law’s grave. Thank goodness she had an AICD, pacer-defibrillator. And that very same AICD also showed that it fired during the actual burial as well.
The unidentified woman, whose case was described in a new report, suffered an electrical short-circuit that would have caused cardiac arrest if she hadn’t had a defibrillator in her chest. The device recorded the exact time, and her doctor later discovered that she suffered an attack as …read more

Jesus did not die of suffocation like others who were crucified in Roman times. Dr. David Ball simulated the crucification of Jesus and has concluded that Jesus died of a ruptured heart.

Jesus couldn’t have shouted at his death if he were suffocated, but could have shouted if he had a ruptured heart.
Jesus suffered further damage for four to six hours after he fell as he carried the cross.
A Roman soldier speared Jesus’s heart and John described how blood and water poured out.

To those who celebrate Easter, have a peaceful Good Friday.
Tags: easter, good friday, jesus, crucifixion, heart, heart disease, david …read more

Louis Acompora died at age 14 when a lacrosse ball in play struck his chest between heartbeats. After throwing the ball back, he had an instant cardiac arrest, then died. He was later determined to have commotio cordis, cardiac death caused by blunt force trauma to the precordium, the part of the body over the heart and stomach. Data show that commotio cordis is second only to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in causing sudden death among young, mostly male, athletes.
If a defibrillator had been available, Louis might have been saved. His parents, John and Karen Acompora, have established the Louis Acompora Foundation …read more

Christa Lilly had a heart attack and stroke in 2000 and has (mostly) been in a coma ever since. Last Sunday, she woke up.
Christa had no idea that she’d been “asleep” for so long and had no sense of the passing of time. For three days, she enjoyed the company of her family, including four daughters and three grandchildren. She even gave a television interview. When her internal clock chimed, Christa lost consciousness again.
The heart attack and stroke damaged her brain to the extent that it is only able to be fully active for a few days at a time. …read more

We’ve learned about pencils, combs, and knives in the heart. Now we’ve got a nail in the heart.
Seventeen-year-old Matt Dexter was helping to construct a barn when he accidentally triggered a nail gun that was being lowered down the ladder to him. Matt was shot in the chest with a three and a quarter inch nail that punctured the right ventricle of his heart.

I dropped the gun and looked down and I could see the head of the nail stuck on the outside of my shirt. I wanted to take it out, but I was scared and didn’t know what …read more

A 12-year-old girl in Kenosha, Wisconsin stabbed a classmate in the heart with a rattail comb on Monday. The victim had a 4- to 5-inch piece of metal embedded in her chest that required surgery to remove. What’s worse, the stabbing occurred in the morning but the victim didn’t realize she’d been stabbed until that night. She’d walked around all day thinking she’d been punched instead. I may start walking around wearing a chest protector from now on.
Update: The 12-year-old attacker has been sentenced to two years in a juvenile prison.
WFRV, November 22, 2006 (This is the second …read more

In a freak accident similar to the one that took Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s life, an 81-year-old man was struck in the chest by a 3-foot-wide stingray while boating on the Intracoastal Waterway of Florida. James Bertakis managed to make it to shore where he was taken by ambulance to Broward General Medical Center. He underwent five hours of surgery to repair puncture wounds to his heart caused by a 2 1/2-inch stingray barb.
[Dr. Eugene] Costantini said doctors repaired puncture wounds in Bertakis’ heart from the barb, which entered the left side, pierced the septum separating the two chambers …read more

Freak accidents involving injuries to the heart might be the next new category here at A Hearty Life. Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin died on Monday, September 4, 2006 during a dive after a stingray struck him.
His producer, John Stainton, said:
He came over the top of the stingray and the barb went up into his chest and put a hole in his heart.
Our condolences to his wife and co-host Terri and his two young children.
Guardian Unlimited, September 4, 2006
Technorati Tags: heart, steve irwin, crocodile hunter, stingray, accident, heart disease, disease, illness, health

In a game of pretend gladiators with his police officer father, 11-year-old Conor Johnson was stabbed in the heart and died four short hours later. His mother, Sharon Johnson, claimed that his medical care was inadequate with no specialist cardio-thoracic surgeons available.
Ian Johnson, 40, told a coroner’s inquest how the four-inch stainless steel knife “slipped from my grasp” during some rough and tumble play with his son, Conor, 11, while he prepared dinner. The knife pierced the left ventricle of Conor’s heart.
What a horrible thing to happen to all of them.

Times Online, July 7, 2006

Four-year-old Brandon Clawson died in July when he tried to make himself a sandwich and ended up stabbing himself in the heart.
He climbed on a worktop, took a knife from a kitchen block and began to make a sandwich.
After laying out the bread, meat and salad cream he fell, with the knife puncturing his chest through his rib cage, passing into his heart and a lung.
This gives me the chills. Children are so unpredictable and accident-prone. I remember several years ago when a pre-teen was goofing around while doing homework and stabbed himself in the heart with a …read more