LIFE BEFORE
Julieta Valdes, a high-intensity athlete who played on the varsity team as a freshman at The Woodlands High School and for the elite team at Houston Juniors Volleyball for seven years, was a seemingly normal, healthy teenager. Before birth, Julieta was diagnosed with arrhythmias, an abnormal beating of the heart, which was believed to have come from her mother, who suffered from a more severe case of them as well. Due to this condition, she was monitored every year to ensure that everything was in order, where the doctors confirmed time and time again that it wasn’t a concern and that she would be able to live her life out like every other kid. This was true for 16 years of her life, until her sudden cardiac arrest on the night of May 3rd, 2020.
Awards
- 2x All American
- Ranked #18 in the US
- Newcomer of the Year
- Texas All-State team 6A
- National Mexican Team Jalisco
- All-district and All-county Teams
- Girls Junior National Championship All-tournament Team
On May 3rd, at approximately 10:50 PM, Julieta went into sudden cardiac arrest while working out at home with her sister Patty. Not knowing what was happening, Patty screamed for her mom upstairs and quickly called 911. She was guided by the operator on how to perform CPR on Julieta while the medical team reached their house. The EMT’s arrived after approximately six minutes of Patty’s call. They began resuscitation maneuvers and were eventually able to bring her back after approximately 23 minutes of Julieta not having a pulse. She eventually became stable enough to be taken in the ambulance to the Texas Children’s hospital in The Woodlands. There, they performed a thoracic X-Ray and an MRI on her brain to assess her condition better. That night, Julieta was transported to the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston since they felt that location was better equipped to provide for the care she needed.
In the early hours of May 4th, Julieta underwent open-heart surgery and was placed on ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), a life-support system used in critical cases. Due to the procedure’s severity, she was placed in a medically induced coma for the duration of her time on life support, which lasted a week. During this period, Julieta required an additional surgery to correct the ECMO machine’s placement. Upon emerging from the coma, she underwent a final surgery to implant an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) on the left side of her chest.
The road to recovery was long and arduous. Complications from multi-organ failure led to pancreatitis and blood clots in her lungs and carotid artery. Additionally, Julieta had to relearn basic functions, including standing, walking, and regaining independence—milestones achieved through several weeks of intensive physical therapy. Finally, on May 27th, Julieta was able to return home to her family, marking the end of a harrowing chapter and the beginning of her recovery journey.
A silver lining
One of the many silver linings Julieta has found from her incident is that she was able to prevent her mom from going into a sudden cardiac arrest in the future. Because they both have the same type of arrhythmias and because of what happened to Julieta, her mom decided to go into surgery on July 24th, 2020 to see if her heart was able to develop the same tachycardias that caused Julieta’s cardiac arrest. After the doctors realized that she did, they proceeded to implant an ICD on her. She is now at home and recovering, but most importantly, she is one less person that will succumb to the dangers of a sudden cardiac arrest.
