Doctor who is example for patients honored as Global Hero

Photo by Chris Howell | Herald-Times
Story and photo reprinted courtesy of The Herald-Times

Elizabeth “Betsy” Sabga goes for a 5-mile run Tuesday
on the Rails to Trails path on the south side of Bloomington.

Doctor who is example for patients honored as Global Hero

In 1991, at age 31, Dr. Elizabeth “Betsy” Sabga was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease.

Five years later, as symptoms of the condition began to worsen, she took up exercise in order build up muscle strength and endurance.

It all seemed to be going very well except for a breathing problem she attributed to sport-induced asthma. Then, one day in 1999, she woke up feeling terrible and drove to work, all the while feeling progressively worse. As she pulled into a parking spot at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where she worked, she slumped over the steering wheel. Fortunately, a security guard saw her.

“He tapped on the window and said, ‘Are you OK?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m not,’” Sabga recalled. “When I got out of the car and lay down on the pavement, when it was a whole seven degrees outside, I think it was pretty clear something was wrong.”

Sabga went into full ventricular tachycardia — literally, a sudden cardiac death event. Fortunately, she was just a minute from the emergency room, where defibrillator paddles shocked her heart back into a more normal pumping rhythm.

The OB/GYN physician recovered and received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) to guard against another such incident. Nine years later, she has dozens of 10K and 10-mile runs, half-marathons and triathlons behind her, including a half-Ironman competition of running, biking and swimming she completed in California last month.

Sabga was recently named a Global Hero through a program launched by the Medtronic medical devices company. The program recognizes people who are living full, if not extraordinary lives, by participating in strenuous athletic events after receiving ICDs and other marvels of medical technology. She’ll be flown to Minneapolis early next month and honored with 24 other recipients who will all participate in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon or Medtronic TC 10-mile race.

Sabga will run the 10-mile race. Her husband, musicologist Daniel Melamed, will join her. “It comes at a good time because he’s doing the Chicago Marathon a few weeks later,” Sabga said. “And then we’re both going out to Las Vegas in December to do a half-marathon there.”

She admits she’s a little obsessed with exercise, but all of her doctors agree that it appears to play a significant role in keeping her MS at bay. “I think the exercise has helped my MS more than my medications,” Sabga said. “It’s hard to say for certain because there aren’t a lot of studies of people with MS doing vigorous activities like this.”

Actually, Sabga believes that an interferon drug she was taking in 1999 was responsible for triggering her cardiac event. She said she doesn’t seem to do well with interferon drugs, which help many MS sufferers. For the last few years she’s done much better on Copaxone, an artificial protein.

There’s only been one scare after receiving the ICD.

Two summers ago, Sabga was running, swimming and biking her way through a Chicago triathlon when, four miles into a six-mile run, she felt a shock to her chest so powerful that it dropped her to the pavement.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I must have gotten Tased,’” she said this week, referring to the powerful electric shock delivered by a Taser electronic defense weapon.

“After a few seconds on the ground it was, ‘Oh, dummy! It’s you. Your ICD went off,’” she recalled with a laugh. She finished the race with a bloody, scraped up leg and later learned that the device went off because her electrolyte level dipped to an unacceptable level. The ICD settings were adjusted to recognize the demands of such vigorous exercise, and she’s been fine since.

“Actually, it was reassuring to know that if anything gets out of whack, the device works,” she said with a laugh. “Not that I want it going off again. They always say it feels like getting kicked in the chest. That’s exactly what it feels like.”

Sabga said she believes she’s doing very well, more than 16 years after her MS diagnosis. “I get tired more easily than a lot of people. I sleep a lot,” she said. “Sometimes my right leg goes numb. I get numbness and tingling when I get tired.”

She stopped delivering babies and doing surgeries three years ago. But she continues to practice medicine in the office of Dr. Brant Ludlow, an OB/GYN specialist. She also sings with Voces Novae, an innovative vocal ensemble, reads grant applications for the Bloomington Community Foundation and volunteers at the Volunteers in Medicine clinic in Bloomington.

Sabga acknowledged, with discernible modesty, that perhaps she does sometimes serve as an example for other MS patients. “I don’t make a big deal about having MS, but I do tell some people. Especially people who need a little encouragement in getting exercise,” she said. “If it takes saying, ‘Look at me,’ then I’m not above using myself as an motivator.”