Spectacular Kids of Athens County: Noah Guthrie, 15
By Danaline McPhail Bryant
August 7, 2008
Noah Guthrie is a muscular, healthy-looking Trimble High School sophomore. At 6-feet-4 inches, he’s easy to spot when he enters a room.
On a recent summer day, Noah was dressed in a sleeveless t-shirt and exercise shorts, set to head for a 7-on-7 football game after finishing an interview for The Athens-NEWS.
He looks the perfect picture of a happy teenager enjoying his summer vacation. He doesn’t look like someone who can tell you about the night he was raced to O’Bleness Hospital, his mother driving the car with one hand on the wheel and the other hand gripping his wrist, frantically searching for a radial pulse, while, in the backseat, his little brother watched in terror as something terrible was happening to his big brother.
This is just what happened to Noah Guthrie last August.
“I’d been at practice, and I’d just taken a hit. I took a break, sat down and my chest started hurting,” Noah said. “Coach said to sit a minute and if I didn’t start to feel better, they’d check me out. It got worse, and they took me home.”
“I was at home when he was at practice,” said Noah’s mother, P.J. Guthrie. “A couple of coaches, Dennis Osborne and Phillip Faires, brought him home. He said his heart was beating fast, and there was pressure in his chest.”
P.J., a nurse, took his pulse and found it to be an elevated 157 beats a minute (normal rate is about 72). When he started having chest pains, P.J. gathered Noah and his brother, Bryce, 10, into her car and headed for the emergency room.
“I knew it was serious, with his heart rate that high and chest pain,” she said. “I really got scared when he said he couldn’t breath. I was driving 80 miles an hour, and I couldn’t get his pulse.”
By the time they arrived at O’Bleness, his pulse rate was 278.
“They brought in the crash cart. It was so hard to watch. It was surreal – to see your son like that. I felt like I was dying inside, but I had to stay calm,” P.J. recalled.
P.J. said when Dan Guthrie, Noah’s father, arrived and saw his son under crash-cart treatment, “he just about melted into the floor.”
Noah’s diagnosis was supra ventricular tachycardia, which means the heart was pumping too fast. Medication was given to slow his heart rate, but after two doses there was no change. Doctors then used defibrillation, a process where an electronic device shocks the heart, hopefully to reinstate normal cardiac function. After two shocks, Noah’s heart rate was normal. His condition stabilized, he was transported by ambulance to Columbus Children’s Hospital, to be treated by a pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Pamela Ro.
Through it all, Noah remained conscious and calm.
“I just kept thinking to myself If anything goes wrong I’m right where I need to be, so don’t sweat it. Don’t add pressure to yourself,’” Noah said.
“He was cool and calm. He totally became our hero that night,” P.J. said.
The next day, he underwent cardiac ablation, where a catheter is used to locate and destroy any abnormalities. Using electricity, doctors tried to replicate the period of arrhythmia he suffered the day before so they could find the cause of the problem. However, the attempt was unsuccessful, and no abnormalities were found.
Doctors decided it was an isolated incident, and he was sent home – after one day’s hospitalization – on medication to insure adequate cardiac output. He was restricted from playing sports or having any kind of exertion until released by his cardiologist.
Sports are important to Noah, and he hated the restrictions, but he stuck to them.
“I’m so used to going so much and playing sports every day, so it was hard,” Noah said. “I went to all the practices and games and watched.”
In addition to playing football, he plays basketball, baseball, golf and track. He was determined to be ready to play his favorite sport, basketball, when the season rolled around. Sure enough, three months later, he was told he could resume all his regular activities.
“It was neat, excellent. I went to practices, made sure I dressed warm, and gave more than I ever had, and I got back in shape pretty fast – in about a week and a half,” Noah said.
“By that first game, he was back up to where he was before,” P.J. said. “I was nervous, but you can’t live in fear. I couldn’t have (prevented) him from continuing his sports career.”
“He did a really good job of following doctors’ orders, and then he worked really hard to get back in shape,” said Greg Koons, head basketball coach. “He’s going to be a really good player. He has worked hard this summer to improve his skills. He has a bright future ahead of him – both in sports and academics.”
“Sports are my top priorities,” Noah said. “I’ve been raised around them, and I’ve been playing since second grade. My dad was my coach all the way up to the eighth grade.”
Noah plans to attend college and wants to study chiropractic medicine.
Oh, yes. He also says he’ll play sports in college, if not basketball, then golf or track.
“I just love sports. That’s the way it’s always been,” he said before heading off for that 7-on-7 game.
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