My best friend in the entire world, Tatum, was moving across the country on August 29, 2021 when she started to feel sick. Moving from Michigan to Denver to return to school, she started vomiting in Iowa, but with still 700 miles to go, she and her boyfriend, Brandon continued to drive until they reached Fort Collins. That entire night Tatum continued vomiting without any relief. Brandon and Tatum made the remainder of the drive to Denver and was feeling bad enough that she decided to go to the ER on August 30. After sitting in the waiting room for 3 hours, she finally got her vitals taken and found out that her heart was only beating at 35 bpm. She was admitted to the hospital that night for observation and to run more tests.

 

Her heart was being monitored the entire night into the next day. She had some more tests run throughout the day without many answers. Then at 6:02 pm on August 31st, while she was taking a nap, Tatum flat lined and went into cardiac arrest. Nurses and doctors called out her time of death as Brandon watched helplessly. She was shocked back to life and immediately put on a ventilator and taken to the ICU. Anyone that knows Tatum knows how feisty she is, and that spirit was used to her advantage as she fought her way off the vent within hours of her being pronounced clinically dead.

 

The next day doctors were finally able to diagnose her with Long Interval QT that basically caused her heart to stop. The only way for her to survive with her condition was to have an internal defibrillator surgically implanted to automatically shock her heart when this happens in the future.

 

Tatum is now healing back in Michigan as she tries to get used to the new normal that comes with being a person living with a heart condition. She plans on returning to Denver in January to start school to earn her degree in journalism.

 

Tatums internal defibrillator alone costs nearly $50,000. That does not include any of the hospital stay, surgeries, or procedures that she had done while there. As you can imagine, being only 24 years old, facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, while trying to process everything is a difficult task. Anything that can help alleviate this financial burden for Tatum so that she can focus on her physical and emotional healing would be so appreciated.

 

Above all, I and everyone else that loves and knows Tatum are just happy that she got this second chance. The world would be so boring if she was no longer in it.

 

Thank you all for supporting Tatum.

 

Angela