Health scare for incoming SGA president providing focus

In November, while facing a life-threatening situation in a hospital emergency room, Mikayla Haggarty would have laughed out loud if someone suggested she could become Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Student Government Association president.

It’s amazing how life can change in a few short months.

The junior-to-be who’s majoring in organizational leadership was announced as the SGA’s next student body president on April 28, along with classmates and friends Maleah Boyd as vice president of legislation and Kamryn Heckman as vice president of finance. It’s the first time an all-female slate has been elected.

It’s also somewhat appropriate as Boyd and Heckman’s support helped Haggarty recover from her health scare. After feeling weak and lightheaded while walking around campus last spring, Haggarty needed several trips to the ER to discover her heart rate was dropping into the 30s. A normal resting heart rate should be between 60 and 100 beats per minute.

“I thought I was normal and was just out of shape and needed to work out more,” Haggarty said. “After classes, I’d be exhausted and go sleep for four hours, thinking that was normal.”

On her first trip to the hospital in July because she was feeling nauseous, Haggarty’s nurse glanced at the monitor while delivering medicine and rushed to alert a doctor. 

“They were going to move me to a different room, a bigger room, in case they had to do CPR on me,” Haggarty said.

After her heart rate stabilized, Haggarty was sent home to schedule a cardiologist appointment, but the earliest available was in January. When Haggarty told her mother she was out of breath walking to class in November, they went back to the ER. They got in to see a cardiologist four days later.

Within 30 seconds of hooking Haggarty up to the monitors, the specialist told her the bottom of her heart was not receiving the proper signals and that she needed a pacemaker. 

“It wasn’t structural, it was electrical,” Haggarty said. “They told me a lot of scary statistics. I was one of the younger pacemaker patients out there.”

Haggarty, now 20, said the device is about the size of her Apple watch, requires a new battery every 10 years, and sends information directly to her phone and the doctor’s office.

Though missing a month of classes, help from Haggarty’s professors kept her up to date, and she was relegated to online classes until the end of the fall semester because she was at a higher risk for a stroke or heart attack. Because of the device’s wires, her cardiologist told her to act like her left arm was broken for a month, and she couldn’t wear a book bag over the pacemaker for a while.

“I hate feeling it, but it’s there,” Haggarty said. “It kind of shaped who I am, kind of like bringing awareness to my health and how important it is to speak up even if you are scared. My energy levels are way higher. Now I’m back on campus all day, every day, no naps, no nothing.”

She’ll need the energy as president, something she’d never considered before outgoing president Sebastien Wilson suggested the three friends think about running. They got acquainted while working for Well-being and Recreation at the fitness center, and now they can’t wait to get started on the SGA’s executive branch.

“We have to listen to what students want because that’s our job,” Haggarty said.

And listen to her heart.