Northbrook, Ill. - School's out for the summer, and kids around Chicago are finally getting the chance to run and play outside. Yet some of them may be running with a silent killer.
In fact, the sudden death of one such North Shore teenage athlete recently has prompted her mother, Michele Snyder, into action. Snyder hopes to change laws and people's mindsets about sudden cardiac arrest. And there's one thing she says MUST be present at every field and court and sporting event where kids are playing.
"It was just a normal day, it was a summer day," said Snyder, calmly recounting August 21, 2008 from her backyard in suburban Northbrook. That fateful day was 17-year-old Jenny Snyder's first soccer practice of the season, right before the start of her senior year of high school.
"She was running really fast and was really into it," Snyder explained. "But then she told the coach that her chest hurt. He thought it was just tightness or something and so he said to stretch. And then the next moment, she just went down."
Jenny had succumbed to what's called sudden cardiac arrest. Barely two hours later, she was dead.
"I went numb. How could my daughter not be here? How could this be happening? It felt like the end of the world," said Snyder.
Sudden cardiac arrest is an abrupt disruption in the rhythm of the heart. It's estimated that nearly 7,000 young people are afflicted every year. There are usually no symptoms and no warnings. The condition was first brought into the spotlight by fallen athletes such as basketball player Hank Gathers, who died 20 years ago on the court. And just six months ago, Chicago Bears player Gaines Adams also died as a result of the ailment.
In Jenny Snyder case, her heart abnormality was congenital--meaning she was born with it. Yet it went undetected.
"She never complained of chest pains before. She was an athlete. She was a lifeguard, windsurfer, and ran everyday two or three miles. It's bizarre," said Snyder.
But there is something that could have, might have, saved Jenny's life: a portable automated external defibrillator, or AED. It essentially jump starts the heart.
"They do work. In the game of sudden death you have about 10 minutes to react and after that, you've got permanent brain injury and usually death," explained Dr. Samuel Dudley, professor and chief of the Department of Cardiology at University of Illinois Medical Center.
Without proximity to an AED, less than 10 percent of sudden cardiac arrest patients survive. Luckily, Sean Morley was near one when he collapsed on a Buffalo Grove baseball field nine years ago. And last year, an AED revived Aurora University student Elizabeth Pearlman on a basketball court.
"It was a gift from god, a blessing," said Pearlman at the time.
The devices first publicly appeared in Illinois 11 years ago at O'Hare and Midway airports. They've since been credited with saving 55 lives there.
Then, after a woman named Colleen O'Sullivan died of sudden cardiac arrest at a Lincoln Park health club, a law in her name was passed requiring AEDs in schools, health clubs and indoor fitness facilities.
And now, a new law named after Rashidi Wheeler, a Northwestern University Football player who died during a football practice in 2001, has been enacted. It requires AEDs at all outdoor fitness facilities, such as practice fields and sporting arenas.
Yet many inconsistencies and loopholes exist in Illinois' AED laws. For example, hotel gyms aren't required to have the devices, and some golf courses and forest preserves are exempt because they don't have money to pay for them. AEDs cost around $1,500.
"They spend a lot more than that on grass seed," said Dr. Dudley.
Illinois AED laws are an unfunded mandate. Over the past six years the state has relied heavily on federal grant money to pay for AEDs but that funding has dropped by nearly half since 2006.
Still, there are preventative measures that athletes can take. An electro-cardiogram (EKG) and an echo cardiogram are two tests that could have detected Jenny Synder's condition. As many as 60 percent of potential heart problems are discovered through these procedures.
"The problem is that those tests take both time and money, and most insurance doesn't pay for it," explained Dr. Dudley.
Non-for-profit groups are trying to fill the gap. The Max Schewitz Foundation, for example, was formed to provide these tests free of charge. Schewitz died of sudden cardiac arrest in 2005. The foundation in his name has now tested more than 11,000 students at 10 different schools in the northern suburbs. As a result, at least 150 students have been diagnosed with heart abnormalities that would have otherwise gone untreated.
Michele Snyder admits there's no way to know for sure whether an AED or and EKG would have saved her daughter's life.
"But it's all she had," Snyder sighs. "It's all she had."
Snyder is currently the co-executive director of National Parent Heart Watch, another non-profit dedicated to providing information
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