I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life than I have been now.

At 12:41AM today (Sunday, February 3rd), my younger brother Daniel screamed out in pain saying that he got a large jolt from his implanted defibrillator. I stayed with him thinking it was fine since the idea of the defibrillator is to shock his heart if there is any heart irregularities.

I thought he was in the clear after he calmed down a bit but he got a major jolt to the point where he body arched out of my arms. You know when you watch medical drama shows and they use a defibrillator to jolt the heart back to normal? Now imagine that but he's entirely conscious and aware of it and screaming in pain.

I realized that something was wrong and mom went to quickly wake up dad where both dad and I drove to the hospital as quick and as safely as we could. He got another strong jolt as dad was driving and I stayed with him.

When we got to admissions, there was another person ahead of us. But Daniel got another strong jolt and he was screaming in pain.

So he was rushed to the trauma unit, where nurses and doctors did everything they could to slow down his head. He had more episodes to the point where the nurses' hearts went out to him because of his terrified screams of pain. I lost count after 15 more of them and did the best I could to calm him and soothe him.

What made it worse was that Daniel knew when he was going to get shocked. So the anticipation made it a lot worse for him. I felt so helpless as I held his head in my arms and then felt the electric jolt course through his body. 

He had to take an ambulance to go to the Heart Institute where they specialized in electro-cardiology. They were able to stabilize his heart there since his heart rate was registering 250 beats per minute. He's so very tired and weak from the ordeal of it all. My parents and I are relieved that he is, but we're worried that this might happen again. And we're at a loss, as are the doctors, to what caused his defibrillator to shock him not once, but more than 15 times within the course of 3 hours. 

Dad and I are home now and Daniel's staying at the hospital, where he's stabilized and they're monitoring him. They're also trying to interpret the data from his defibrillator to see what caused it in the first place and why so many of them in such quick succession.