Posted: DECEMBER 24, 2007

Athletics: Gotta Have Heart

Sens Lift Spirits of Athletic Couple After Cardiac Scares Terry Hicks still has the ticket he bought in 1992 for the first-ever Sens game as a resurrected team. He keeps it tucked away in a drawer upstairs in the home he shares with his wife, Grace Verbeek. It is still in mint condition after all these years. That ticket is golden to him, right up there with the medals and plaques he’s collected from the two Ironmans and four marathons he finished. "Grace and I are huge Sens fans," he says. Up until 2007, they could count on one hand the number of games they’d missed since the team made its return to Ottawa. "Whether it was at Scotiabank Place or watching from our living room, we never missed a game,"he says. "But we’ve had a few distractions lately that have kept us away." To call what the couple has been through this year a distraction would be a gross understatement. In January, Grace, a 1984 Olympian and one of the top 800m runners in Canada, suffered a cardiac arrest while coaching a group of athletes at the Louis Real indoor track. Shortly after the warm up, she collapsed and stopped breathing. With the help of friends and the EMS unit, she was rushed to the Montfort Hospital. She was later diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, or ARVD, a condition caused by a build up of scar tissue around the heart. "It came as a huge shock," says Grace. "There were no warning signs." Apparently, the disease, which is passed on through the genes and causes an abnormally fast heart rhythm - is more common than previously thought. People who have had no symptoms their entire lives have suddenly dropped dead of arrhythmia. It killed Reggie Lewis, captain of the Boston Celtics, and nearly took the life of Jiri Fisher of the Detroit Red Wings. Grace was fitted with a $35,000 pacemaker that keeps a constant watch on her heart. If her heart goes into life threatening rhythm again, the device kicks into high gear. Within weeks of surgery, Grace marked her return to normalcy with a light run and supporting the Sens through the spring and their run in the playoffs. While she could have run the Red Mile, she and Terry choose to enjoy the walk along Elgin Street with the sea of Sens fans. Their lives weren’t normal for long though. On November 12, just over a week after completing the New York marathon, Terry suffered a heart attack. "I woke up in the middle of the night with this terrible indigestion," says Terry. "At first, I thought it was my daughter’s cooking," he chides. (They’d been there for dinner earlier that evening) "I took a couple of Rolaids but it kept getting worst. Finally, Grace said, ‘Terry it’s your heart.’" So, at about 5:00 AM, they raced to the General and within minutes, they were at the Heart Institute. The doctors discovered Terry’s left artery was 100% blocked. By 8:30 AM, Terry was in the recovery room with a stent in place. "They call that artery the widow maker. I couldn’t believe, it,," he says:"Why me?" "I’ve been doing everything right. I don’t smoke, I have a healthy diet. I get plenty of exercise. My cholesterol is lower than the charts at the Heart Institute. Hey, I just ran a marathon last week." "I knew there were heart problems in our family (his father died of a heart attack at 68) but I was doing everything I could to prevent it." "The day it happened, I really started to wonder if a healthy lifestyle isn’t overrated. Since then, I’ve realized that it probably saved us in the end.”" "People have died from what we’ve gone through,"adds Grace. "We’re lucky. " "We just haven’t been so lucky in terms of our DNA." They’re on the road to recovery."We’re doing as much as the doctor will let us,"” says Terry. They plan to be back in their regular seats at Scotiabank Place on December 27 to see the Sens in action against the Islanders. They’re hoping their favourite player, Mike Fisher, will also be back to playing 100% after suffering an oblique injury in the Sens win over Atlanta last weekend. "We like the whole team but we love Mike Fisher," says Terry. "How can you not love a guy who goes 100% all the time? He has so much desire. I don’t think there is another player in the league with more heart." Photo Credit: Serge Peters This article first appeared in the Ottawa SUN and is posted with the permission of Lynne Bermel © Copyright 2007 Lynne Bermel Lynne Bermel, a former world-ranked pro Ironman competitor, is a senior marketing & PR consultant living in Ottawa.. She is also a freelance writer and TV sports show host. You can reach her at: lynnebermel@rogers.com. You can access previous columns by Lynne at: LB_Columns Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest