Stacy Tuckwell

“I think my sister said it perfectly. She said, ‘You guys are actually angels that were put on this earth to do this very work.’”

Stacy Tuckwell had a strange stomach pain that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was a soreness that just showed up one day, barely enough to notice unless she touched the spot on her stomach. That all changed three days later. The feeling had increased to something like indigestion. She popped a couple Advil, hoping to feel better in the morning, but was woken up by the pain overnight. “Right then I realized I needed to go to the E.R., so I woke my husband up; we jumped in the car and got to the hospital at three in the morning. By then, pain was really severe.”

Stacy says the emergency team was pretty certain she had appendicitis, so they ordered a CT scan to definitively diagnose it. She was given medication to help with her pain but suddenly started throwing up and couldn’t stop, making a CT scan impossible. The team tried more pain medication, but it had the same result. As they were bringing her back to the E.R., Stacy was suddenly struggling to keep her eyes open, “I felt like I was falling asleep. I was getting really drowsy, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, thank God. The pain medication is finally kicking in.’ But that was actually my heart stopping.”

When Stacy stopped breathing moments later, the E.R. nurses called a Code Blue and revived her with CPR. Her husband was there for all of it. “He was really traumatized. To this day, when he talks about it, he gets teary because he felt like he watched me die,” Stacy said.

Once she was stabilized, the emergency team installed a breathing tube and ordered a battery of tests. They finally got her in for a CT scan which showed her appendix was inflamed, but that didn’t explain the cardiac arrest. Heart tests showed no abnormalities. They would need more time to figure it out. She was transferred to the Trauma Intensive Care Unit (ICU), but as nurses were getting her situated in her new room, Stacy’s heart stopped for the second time in less than an hour. Nurses brought her back with CPR again.

Later that day, Dr. Kaysie Banton, the trauma medical director at Swedish, told Stacy that with her two cardiac arrests, they didn’t want to rush her into surgery for her inflamed appendix, a condition that can sometimes be treated with antibiotics. They kept her in the ICU overnight for observation and planned more tests to see if they could get some clarity on what was causing her heart to stop.

The next day, another CT scan initially focused on her lungs to see if she was well enough to remove her breathing tube showed her appendix had burst. Now surgery was the only option. “Dr. Banton described it later to me like a bomb went off in my stomach, like it just blew up,” Stacy said. Her surgery was successful, but recovery was challenging in ways she didn’t anticipate. She was on a lot of pain medicine that made her sleepy. Drifting off was an uneasy reminder of what her cardiac arrests were like. “I don't know if PTSD is the right term for it, but I was scared the first few days I was there. I kept thinking, ‘I don't want my heart to stop again.’ With my broken ribs and sternum [from CPR] and then the wound from surgery, I was dreading another cardiac arrest.”

Doctors did more tests, and thankfully, there was no damage to Stacy’s heart. After ruling everything out, they determined septic shock from her infected appendix was the most likely cause. While she was recovering from major surgery, the care teams in the ICU tended to Stacy and her family’s emotional trauma. Nurse Alyssa Torrez provided her with a journal to write down and process her feelings, a treatment for post-intensive care syndrome, a group of mental and physical symptoms that arise in 50% of patients who survive life-threatening illness.

Alyssa assured Stacy that no matter where or when she needed her, if she needed to talk, she’d be there for her. “That really struck me because those nurses are so busy. They are doing such complex work and are running from one thing to another, but they’re also sensitive enough to see past the trauma and care for the whole patient and their whole family,” Stacy said.

A moment that was especially touching came the first night after surgery. Stacy’s daughter and sister came to visit her in the ICU, and the daughter had been holding her hand. As visiting hours were ending, she didn’t know how to say goodbye and burst into tears. “Alyssa saw my daughter struggling, and she said, ‘It's really important that you hug your mom. You can hug your mom.’ And she goes, ‘Let me show you how to do it.” The nurse gently set Stacy up in bed and helped her daughter and sister come in and hug her. “She could have easily just run out of the room to go on with her day, but she recognized a situation where it was really important for them to feel connected to me and found a way to make it possible. It was so tender, and I know these nurses are doing that for every patient here because they’re just incredible,” Stacy said.

Another ICU nurse, Claire Blanken, impressed Stacy with her gentleness. She made her feel safe and connected in a place where all the equipment and recovery can be isolating. Once she was well enough, Stacy was released down to surgical telemetry to continue her recovery, where she met nurse Tom Bock, who had attended the same college as her, and kept spirits high talking about their old hockey team.

Eight days after a stomach ache turned into a life-threatening ordeal, Stacy, HealthONE’s Director of Physician Recruitment, was discharged. “It was such a comfort knowing that Swedish, my neighborhood hospital, is not only a Level 1 Trauma Center with trauma surgeons like Dr. Banton on standby for anything that could happen—but the compassion and personal care I got from my nurses made such a difference when my family was going through such a scary time.”

Learn more about our Level 1 Trauma Center and Cardiovascular specialists.