By Kevin Mills,Staff Writer

FREEPORT – Driving home from school, Leslie Gasper blacked out behind the wheel.

“I came to just in time to hit my brakes and rear-end a woman,” Gasper said.

“I didn’t know what happened. I just knew there was a time that I was driving, and then I don’t know anything. Then I knew something, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Gasper had passed out a year earlier. She assumed it was a fluke incident. Then came the car accident her senior year.

The 1997 Maranacook graduate was accused of being inattentive and recklessly causing the accident.

Gasper knew that wasn’t true. She would eventually be sued over the accident, but finding the cause of her blackouts came first.

“We still weren’t sure what happened,” said Gasper, a former standout javelin thrower and three-sport athlete.

“We started to pursue it to some degree, EKG after EKG. There was nothing they could find.

“There was nothing that was weird.”

Then, as a sophomore at the University of Southern Maine, the Manchester native passed out again. Visiting another dorm, she just keeled over.

A week later, it happened again, and then a third time soon after.

“When it happened three times in close proximity, it was a really serious issue,” said Gasper, who had grand mal seizures as a child.

“What if it happened driving again?”

It just so happened that her pediatrician, Dr. Stephen Meister, is married to cardiologist Dr. Dervilla McCann of Androscoggin Cardiology Associates in Auburn. Gasper consulted with McCann after the car accident, but nothing was detected.

After the fainting episodes at USM, tests were run again.

She was told there was nothing wrong with her heart and nothing wrong with her brain. But there was a problem with the signals running between the two, a condition called neurocardiogenic (or vasovagal) syncope.

Vasovagal syncope

The condition, says McCann, is a miscommunication between the brain and the heart that leads to fainting.

When reflexes that control the heart rate and blood pressure react abnormally, the result can be a drop in blood pressure.

“The heart gets the message to put on the brakes at the same time the blood vessels are getting the message not to open up and dilate,” she said. “So all the blood gets pooled in the legs.”

The condition occurs with people of all ages, but young women are especially susceptible.

“They have low blood pressure, oftentimes borderline blood pressure, to begin with,” McCann said.

“I see lots of 20-year-olds that have blood pressure right around 100. That’s really normal. So if they drop 20 points, they’re not going to sustain consciousness.”

A tilt-table test, where a patient lies flat and is slowly tilted upward, allows a physician to monitor blood pressure and heart rate and diagnose this condition.

As Gasper took the test, she told McCann that she wasn’t feeling well.

“She said, I bet you’re not,'” said Gasper, who passed out moments later.

McCann consulted with colleagues in Boston and phoned Gasper later that afternoon. She explained that her case was severe and unhealthy because of the amount of heart block she endured.

Gasper would have to get a pacemaker.

“My immediate response was negative,” Gasper said. “I’m not 60, I’m 19. I’m healthy.’ It was, Why now and why me?’ None of it made sense.”

Treating the symptoms

For some people with the condition, medication and a change in lifestyle help. In more severe cases, a pacemaker is used to keep the heart rate going and the blood pressure from dropping.

“My personal experience with close follow-up and a combination of physiological intervention, possibly a device and psychological counseling, these people do very well, but you have to be sensitive to the psychological aspect of this,” McCann said.

Sometimes the mental effects are more severe than physical ones.

People often become accustomed to particular habits to avoid situations in which they faint. Even if physical problems are corrected, the avoidance continues.

Some don’t seek help, just ways to avoid fainting. They become trapped in a never-ending cycle.

“You become completely neurotic because you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop, and you have chronic anxiety all the time,” McCann said.

“There are emotional sides of this that come with completely losing control of your body. It’s freaky and it’s unpredictable.”

Gasper had the stress of college life and faced the lawsuit and numerous depositions. As if that weren’t enough, after getting the pacemaker, she took the tilt-table test again – and failed in the final minutes.

“I was just so destroyed,” Gasper said. “It didn’t work. I passed out again.”

After making adjustments to the pacemaker, Gasper took the test a third time and passed. She’s been relatively free of episodes since, continued competing as a javelin thrower at USM and even won her lawsuit.

“That helped give me closure,” said Gasper, who currently works at L.L. Bean.

“Finally, having people believe in me and to finally have my condition confirmed. They knew this was real. I wasn’t making it up. I had felt so defensive and so frustrated during the whole thing.”

Sharing her story

Gasper brings a healthy perspective and gladly shares her story with others. After Alicia Drake of Monmouth was diagnosed with the condition, Gasper explained to Alicia and her mother, Jane, that she had felt the same fear and uncertainty.

“I told her mother that (Alicia) is not going to see what this is going to do for her now, because I didn’t see that,” Gasper said.

“Then I said that it was the best thing I ever did. It took all the worry out of my life. It took all the unpredictability. It took the worry away from my parents. I said that she will come to find that this is the best thing to ever happen to her, too, because all of this will stop. It won’t be her life to have that happen anymore.

“I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I can worry about the things that are important to me now.”

McCann told Gasper it is a condition that could be outgrown, but there is no guarantee it would not return. One cardiologist in Boston even said Gasper might be able to live without her pacemaker at some point.

“I’m sitting on the other side of the desk thinking, Over my dead body will you take my sanity out of my body,'” Gasper said.

“There’s no chance. I don’t care if I never use it again. I’m going to have this the rest of my life, and nobody’s going to tell me different.”