Teen athlete survives heart attack

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July 13, 2008

By KIM SMITH DEDAM The Press Republican Sun Jul 13, 2008, 12:00 AM EDT

ELIZABETHTOWN -- Heart attacks aren't supposed to strike 14-year-old star athletes.

But when Walter "Smitty" Marvin looked outside and saw his son Brock lying prone on the rocky ledge below their Elizabethtown home, he knew something was very, very wrong.

Brock remembers virtually nothing about what happened the day his heart beat out of rhythm, and less about the race to the hospital where he "flat-lined" as his heart stopped beating altogether, then miraculously -- or due to a perfect sequence of well-timed reactions -- started pumping again.

"Four doctors have told me, that kid's a miracle," Smitty says.

Sitting together in the family room, the father and both sons Brock and Connor, 12, shared their thoughts about what happened and what's ahead of them.

Brock recalled a dizzy spell a few days before the heart attack.

"At baseball practice on Friday, I got a little dizzy, but it went away quickly. I remember I couldn't see much," he said.

The Marvins called the doctor when they got home. But it all seemed rather ordinary.

Brock Marvin, an eighth-grader, had just earned a spot on the varsity baseball team.

An honor student since elementary school, the young man successfully completed his first season at varsity soccer earlier that fall. He played varsity basketball all winter and played star goalie in the Plattsburgh Indoor Soccer League for three years.

What happened next seemed surreal, even though Brock's mom, Darlene, has a similar heart condition requiring a defibrillator implant.

There had been no prescribed need for Brock to get an echocardiogram, Smitty said.

"It's just not something they do for routine physicals."

SUDDEN HEART ATTACK

On a Tuesday evening, shortly after baseball practice as the school year wound down, Brock and Connor were tossing a ball with Brock's golden labrador, Rocko, in hot pursuit.

After about 10 minutes, Connor went inside to scope out dinner.

About a minute later, they looked to see what Brock was doing, sensing something wasn't right.

Brock appeared to start convulsing then started screaming and shaking uncontrollable in a full seizure.

Yelling for Connor to dial 9-1-1, Smitty tried to restrain Brock enough to get him into the car for a race to the hospital about four miles away.

"We didn't know how long we had, and we didn't want to wait for an ambulance to get up here," he said, pointing to the steep driveway to their home overlooking Hurricane Mountain.

LIFEFLIGHT

The stabilization effort continued at Elizabethtown Community Hospital where Brock was quickly connected to monitors.

"He was in tachycardia, he "flat-lined" at the hospital," Smitty said, "they threw us out of the room."

Hospital medical director Dr. Rob DeMuro gave Brock a shot of medicine to jumpstart a heartbeat, which then, by some miracle, "self corrected," Smitty said.

Within minutes, a state police helicopter landed at the school soccer field to take Brock to Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington.

"After four or five hours, he came around," Smitty said.

The large extended family had gathered awaiting news.

And it was tough to hear.

SCAR TISSUE

An echocardiogram showed Brock has an enlarged heart, a genetic condition called dilated cardiomyopathy, which results in about 10,000 deaths from cardiac arrest across the nation every year.

The heart attack had left the consummate athlete with one-third the normal pumping capacity.

"A cardiac MRI showed scar tissue at least one year old," Smitty said, "which means his heart started enlarging about a year ago."

Before being released from Fletcher Allen a week later, doctors implanted a defibrillator in Brock's chest.

The rectangular object under the skin below his left shoulder is about the size of a cell phone.

"My friends call it a cell phone, and always want to dial it," Brock smiled.

PLAYING GOLF

Aside from an intense longing to play ball, the young athlete remains hopeful about the future.

He does get a few rounds of golf in these days.

And he wants people to know the truth about heart disease.

"If it runs in your family, there's a good chance you can get this," Brock said.

Connor said he's adjusted to playing more of the games his brother can play.

"He's not as much of a pain in the butt as before," Smitty said.

The brothers grinned.

"I think I inherited his luck," Brock said, pointing to his father.

They don't know where the story will end, with a look at surgical solutions in the near future.

But optimism runs through it.

"And they all lived happily ever after," Smitty said.

kdedam@pressrepublican.com