Jeff Stichler anxiously watched as emergency room doctors feverishly worked to get a steady heartbeat on his wife on Oct. 17, 2008.

Even after numerous electric shocks to her chest, Melanie Stichler remained in a vegetative state and no one knew what caused her to lose her pulse and suddenly collapse.

“Basically, her eyes opened, but she wasn’t there,” Jeff said. “She was a vegetable. … We were starting to look at long-term care facilities.”

A year later, Melanie, 32, is much better. While still recovering, there is little evidence of her medical emergency.

“There’s no scientific explanation for it,” said Dr. Hina Siddiqui, a cardiologist/cardiac electrophysiologist with affiliations at several Houston-area hospitals. “If you’re a religious person, you’d call it a miracle.”

On Saturday, the Sitchlers, who live in Conroe, celebrated Melanie’s one-year survival anniversary at the Conroe Family YMCA with doctors and family friends.

Melanie Stichler was out shopping with her then-4-year-old daughter Kylie. She was on the phone and felt like she was going to faint.

Melanie collapsed in the store, and EMS was called.

“They got there and found she didn’t have a heartbeat,” Jeff said. “They shocked her five times and couldn’t get a heartbeat.”

She was transported to Conroe Regional Medical Center as EMS personnel worked on her.

“I was expecting to see her talking to the doctors. … But when they said they were still trying to get her heart started, I was stunned,” said Jeff, an assistant principal at The Woodlands College Park High School.

For 20-30 minutes, doctors shocked Melanie’s heart. It would start, then begin an odd rhythm before stopping again.

At one point, Melanie was considered legally dead.

Dr. Jay Kovar, then the CRMC emergency room director, was on duty when Melanie came in with her heart fibrillating.

“That means every muscle in her heart was beating, not as a unit but all separately,” Kovar said. “She was still in cardiac arrest when they brought her to me in the Conroe ER.”

After a heartbeat was regained, Melanie received a “cooling treatment,” known as induced therapeutic hypothermia, that slows the initial recovery period so less brain damage occurs.

When doctors determined a blocked artery didn’t cause her cardiac arrest, Siddiqui was called in.

Knowing the details surrounding Melanie’s sudden cardiac arrest and after reading an electrocardiogram of her heart rhythm, all things pointed to long QT syndrome, Siddiqui said.

“It might not be very common,” she said. “But with young people who arrest, you have to keep that in the back of your mind.”

After two weeks of waiting to see whether Melanie would have a chance at recovery, Siddiqui installed an internal defibrillator.

“We don’t know how much of a vegetable she’ll be, but she’s 31 years old with two kids. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, but I felt putting the defibrillator in was the right thing,” she said.

Melanie responded almost immediately.

“As she crossed the threshold to the ICU room … she lit up,” Jeff said. “She was looking around and raised her eyebrows like, ‘Where am I at?”

On Nov. 1, Siddiqui received a call that Melanie squeezed a nurse’s hand, smiled and whispered “thank you.”

“I was thinking, ‘You have got to be kidding me,” Siddiqui said. “This girl was not there yesterday. I immediately went in, and she was sitting up and wide awake. I never felt that emotional in my professional life. It was a miracle. There’s no explanation for it.”

On Nov. 2, Melanie was transferred to The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research at Memorial Hermann in Houston for physical therapy. She stayed for 1-1/2 months and was discharged in time to spend Christmas with her family.

“They can’t believe how well she’s doing, because she should not be walking or doing any of the things she does,” Jeff said. “The doctors can’t explain how she improved as fast as she did.”

Melanie spent nearly a month in a wheelchair and had to learn how to talk, walk and write. It took her a month to learn how to button her pants and six weeks to learn how to write an “A.”

“Many times, I think I could have missed this,” she said. “I was closer to being dead than this.”

She spent another two months in outpatient therapy.

Melanie, about 95 percent recovered, still has issues with spatial reasoning.

“I was trying to cut brownies the right way and I was having problems,” Melanie said. “I could cut the straight line OK, but I had a hard timing trying to cut a square.”

She also is working on tying her shoes.

Jeff and Melanie attribute her success to their faith and all the help from the community. Friends cooked the family dinner for months and took Kylie to and from school with Melanie in the car. Conroe Driving School offered free driving lessons, and a trainer at the Conroe Family YMCA donated time to help Melanie.

Employees at TWCPHS also donated their vacation days so Jeff wouldn’t lose any pay while he spent time with Melanie.

Long QT syndrome is a heart rhythm disorder that can cause fast, chaotic heartbeats. The rapid heartbeats, caused by changes in the part of your heart that causes it to beat, may lead to fainting. The heart’s rhythm may beat so erratically that it causes sudden death.

“Usually, the first sign is death,” Jeff said. “You really don’t find out until they’re dead, so her surviving this is spectacular.”

The most common symptoms include fainting, seizures and sudden death. Some doctors believe that inherited LQTS-causing mutations explain about 10-15 percent of sudden infant death syndrome cases.

Treatment includes medications, medical devices such as a pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, surgery such as a left-sided sympathetic denervation, and lifestyle changes.

October is National Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month. More than 250,000 people die annually from sudden cardiac arrest. Ninety-five percent die because they don’t receive a lifesaving shock from an automatic defibrillator within four to six minutes.

About half of those with long QT syndrome don’t have any signs or symptoms. They may be aware of their condition only from results of an EKG performed for an unrelated reason, because they have a family history of long QT syndrome or because of genetic testing.

“If you get dizzy or pass out, it may be nothing, but it’s important to get it checked out,” Siddiqui said. “If these symptoms keep happening, insist on being evaluated by a cardiologist.”

Since it is a genetic mutation, Melanie and Jeff had their children tested with an EKG. Family members on both sides also got tested. Melanie’s mother, Vickki Sears, of Magnolia, had a defibrillator installed.

“It really saved her life too,” Melanie said.

Genetic testing is the only sure way to discover long QT syndrome before it’s too late.

A video of Melanie’s story can be viewed at www.arkchurch.org/media/videos/.