Beware of Panic or Anxiety Attacks, they may be a sign of worse to come

Re reading the title, I can see how this might cause some over concern in the hypochondriacs of the world, the story does need to be told though.

I was reading through the local newspaper this morning and I ran across a front page story of a local Delta Girl, Brandi Knapp, who died of an undiagnosed heart condition known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. I guess I should say her condition was mis-diagnosed SEVERAL TIMES. Apparently the local hack doctor(s) said he rapid and irregular heart beats as well as dizziness and shortness of breath were caused by PANIC ATTACKS.

This 13 year old girl lived a very happy existance and from how the story reads, was always friendly to everyone, even the unpopular and picked on kids. It is a sad thing when a child with so much zest for life and caring for others leaves this world so early. Even worse is the fact her condition whould have been treatable had her doctor done his/her job properly. A simple Elecro-cardiogram (ECG) would have exposed her condition and Brandi would not have died such an untimely death.

The condition is a result of an extra connection in the heart which causes an abnormally fast heartbeat and other symptoms such as dizziness. My hope is those searching for INFORMATION ON ANXIETY or PANIC ATTACKS read this article and push their doctors for a more thorough examination. With modern technology the way it is, there is no need for any more 13 year old children to die of a completely managable condition.

In closing, I hope the lazy assed doctors who's complacency caused Brandi's untimely death get sued for all they are worth and banned from medical practice. This is NOT a little mistake.

Here is the original Story:

-------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing people noticed about Brandi Knapp was her ever-changing hair colour. It could be red one day, streaked with blue the next, blonde the week after that. A fashion-conscious teen, she loved to dress with flair and march to her own drum, happily snapping photos along the way.

"She always took a different path, even as a little girl," remembers her mom, Lisa.

"She just liked to do things differently. She didn't like to be like everybody else, that's all." She wasn't entirely a non-conformist, though.

"She listened when we told her something. With the hair and clothes, I let her do what she wanted, as long as she didn't act out in other ways, which she didn't. She was good." Creative.

Different.

Caring.

Social.

Cheerful.

These are other words used to describe the young, photogenic Deltan, whose life was cut short after suffering the unthinkable: cardiac arrest triggered by an undiagnosed heart defect.

The day it happened plays like a movie in Lisa's mind, in full detail. For those close to Brandi Marie Knapp, it's like a real-life horror film. Until too late, her parents knew nothing about Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, an alphabet-soup jumble of words used to define abnormal electric pathways in the heart that cause disruption to its normal rhythm.

Like Brandi, people with WPW are born with an extra connection in the heart, leading to an abnormally fast heartbeat and symptoms such as dizziness and shortness of breath.

Over the 13 years of her life, Brandi had complained to her parents about these irritants.

"Doctors told us it was just anxiety, panic attacks," recalls Lisa.

In rare cases, the syndrome can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death.

"If we'd known she had this," says Lisa, "all we would have had to do is take her into emergency and her take some medication, or have them stop her heart to put it back into rhythm. We had no idea."

On Thanksgiving Day, Brandi woke up feeling good and excited about meeting a friend at Pinewood Elementary. It was a familiar trip for the first-year Seaquam Secondary student, who, since Kindergarten, had bused to the Watershed Park-area school from her family's home on Ladner Truck Road. This time out, her mom drove her.

"Usually," recalls Lisa, "she'd give me a hug or just say, 'Thanks for the ride, mom,' but that time she gave me a real kiss, on the lips. That was nice."

Brandi met her friend and off they went for the day.

Little more than an hour later, Lisa received a phone call.

It was Brandi, and she wasn't feeling well.

Her mom told her to relax and try to catch her breath, maybe lie down for a bit.

A couple hours later, another phone call from Brandi, this time asking her mom to pick her up.

"I could hear in her voice that something wasn't right."

She'd thrown up and looked like she'd come down with the flu.

At home, Brandi lied down on the couch and dry-heaved several times. She grew unresponsive as the afternoon wore on, her body cold and clammy.

By dinner time, Lisa put her hand on her daughter's stomach while dad Kevin watched over her. At that very moment, Brandi gasped as her head was thrown back and her back arched.

Cardiac arrest.

Paramedics arrived on the scene in decent time, but the first ambulance wasn't equipped with a defibrillator to help restart Brandi's broken heart. As the clock ticked, she slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness.

Five days later, she died in hospital.

On Sunday, nearly 400 people - family, friends, neighbours and teachers - said goodbye to Brandi at Valley View Funeral Home in Surrey.

They remembered her as a social butterfly who sang in the school choir and loved to bake, figure-skate and create giant collages of photos, many of them self-portraits.

She always championed the underdog, treating others like she'd want to be treated.

"She really took that to heart," says Lisa. "I've heard stories now about her stepping up and making friends with the kids who were picked on and made fun of. That was her."

Brandi talked of being a model when she grew up, or maybe an actress.

But her dreams were dashed by WPW, a potentially deadly acronym for a syndrome that can only be detected by a cardiologist using an electrocardiogram (ECG) test.

At the hospital with Brandi comatose, her parents were told about the syndrome, which isn't well known and is difficult to diagnose.

"Now we know what it is," Kevin says with resignation.

"Too late."

This week, Lisa said she's going to be tested for WPW, having suffered panic attacks, as is Brandi's older sister Becky.

"The only thing that could help losing her," says Lisa, "is if we could have one parent whose child is having panic attacks, to take the child to a doctor and push the issue, get the tests done. If we'd known more, we'd have had the tests done in a heartbeat, if we knew it was something more serious than just panic attacks. If we can save one child and the parents from going through something like this, that's what we hope for."

In Brandi's honour, a Knapp Family Trust Fund has been set up at VanCity branch 7, account number 486753.