"Rachel Turpin-Smith, an athletic 42 year old, chronicles, the medical circumstances that resulted in her 1991 ICD implant in her new book. SUDDEN DEATH: A Survivor's Story. As she writes about her cardiac problems and her family's struggles with her illness, Rachel interweaves other issues, including overcoming past drug use and ongoing infertility, into her ICD story. By the end of this book, you will know Rachel and her husband, Larry, as a brother an sister, .ICD wearers will take heart from her story and know a return to good quality of life is possible through life-saving medical technology. Rachel's story is a gift to other ICD patients.
Medtronic, Inc. Rhythms of Life, Fall 2000
SUDDEN DEATH: A Survivor's Story
by Rachel Turpin-Smith
A review by Bolivar O'Rear, a former editor and writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A lovely young woman. Not just healthy, but a triathlete. Suddenly dead.
But now alive again.
Tragedy, then triumph.
This story, when touching on just the highlights, sounds like fiction;
but it's not. It is the real life story of Rachel Turpin-Smith told in her
can't-put-it-down book "Sudden Death: A Survivor's Story."
In the book, written with the help of her journalist brother Jeff Turpin,
she tells of the evening in December 1991 that her heart began to race at 136
beats a minute, double its normal speed at that hour, and then stopped. She
and her husband Larry Smith were in their Ft. Myers, Fla., home. Larry
frantically called his mother, a nurse, then 911, then began CPR. His brother
helped with the CPR until the medics arrived three minutes later. But all
they could achieve was a flat line.
Rachel had died.
Between the home and the hospital the medics and doctors tried to revive
Rachel for nearly an hour with no signs of life. Finally, the cardiologist on
call told Larry they had managed to get Rachel's heart started again. They
would give her 24 hours to see if she would begin breathing on her own
despite grave fears she might already be brain dead.
In her book Rachel chronicals the rest of the 1990s during which her
family, various medical personnel and particularly she and Larry never
stopped struggling and working for her recovery. The story in which she
overcomes clinical death then blindness could be compared to a Biblical
miracle tied to modern medicine.
In addition to the inspiring miracle aspect of the book, what makes it
such compelling reading, is the utter candor with which Rachel tells about
her life. The hurts and heartaches, the highs and lows, the teen-age drug use
and recovery, the marathons and triathlons, the marriage and happinesses are
all there, hung out for the world to see. And they take the reader along with
them.
A book that should be read by persons with heart problems and the medical
personnel that take care of them, "Sudden Death" is also a highly readable
book that will appeal to everyone.
Denise Buonocore NP, 
