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You must be your own advocate! Photo by St. Joseph
Below are links to wonderful sites that help educate lay people on heart disease. Since 2003 there has been major effort from organizations spending huge amounts of money, time, advertising and grassroots efforts to get the public to understand that heart disease is America's number one killer. Campaigns across America are trying to educate us that more women than men die from heart disease and have been for over twenty years. This information comes from successful national organizations listed below.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/heart-care
These links provide wonderful information for healthy diets, what our cholesterol, blood pressure and tryglycerites should be. Healthy receips, walking plans/clubs are all embedded within these articles. These same groups have made an effort to educate doctors and the public.
This begs the question: Why after six solid years of strong marketing information is a story that I've attached below still happening? Conclusion is patient advocacy. No one knows your body as you do. No one can stant up for you better than you. You must have the confidence that you know your body better than anyone else. You have to listen to your body and trust your gut, even if it's your gut that is causing the problem. The white coat intimidation is real.
Maybe patients should all wear white coats! We walk in the door of the emergency room and the first thing we do is put a white coat on, with a name tag. Mine would read - listen to me and what I'm saying! I state my symptoms clearly and then make sure they understand that I'm not being emotional, over anxious or hormonal. Though possibly the last three could be true.
Please read the story below. The biggest point here is what? Stand up for yourself, even if you're throwing up and sweating profusively. Or teach and train your friends and loved ones about heart disease and it's risk factors and symtoms and promise each other you'll back each other up. Have a plan. And most of all understand that there is a reason close to 500,000 women died last year of heart disease. Maybe Vicki's story below is one of the reasons!
New comment on your post #379 "Live advise to stay Alive"
Author : Vicki Kenter
Hi Lois,
I have a heart story similar to yours. I went to the ER complaining of left side to mid sternum chest pain. My first EKG was normal and my enzymes came back negative - because an EKG doesn't predict an impending heart attack and the enzymes usually take 4-6 hours after the onset of the heart attack before they show up positive. I was told that I was having a gall bladder attack. The gall bladder is on the right side but the pain can sometimes radiate to the left. I had no right sided pain whatsoever. But I was like you and felt intimidated by the medical professional. Down deep I knew it was my heart... it was kind of like knowing you are pregnant before you actually miss your first period. They were going to send me home and told me to follow-up with my own physician but the pain intensified so they decided to keep me so a general surgeon could come in the next morning to discuss removing my gallbladder.
While I was still in the emergency room I started sweating profusely - my hair was soaked and wet from perspiration. I was nauseated and begged for an emisis basin because I thought surely I was going to vomit. I was so ill that I can't recall the intensity of the chest pain except that it was all on the left side including my neck and jaw. I was ignored during this time period. The ER nurse said that it was probably the Dalaudid pain medication that was making me sick. I didn't argue with her. I should have spoke up for myself. I should have demanded that the doctor return to my bedside, but I didn't. I just suffered through a right inferior myocardial infarction and nobody noticed. This was about 9:00 PM or 10:00 pm. The next morning when the general surgeon came into my room it took him less than five seconds to recognize the fact that it wasn't my gallbladder bothering me. At the point - 12 hours later the EKG was positive and so were my cardiac enzymes. I was immediately transferred to CCU and within an hour I was in the cardiac cath lab.
Unfortunately it was too late the damage to my heart was done. Cardiac intervention needs to be performed within six hours of the heart attack. Once the tissue is dead it is irreversible. Four days later while I was still in CCU I had another heart attack. The second time I was in the cath lab within 30 minutes and a stent was placed in area that had 80% blockage. That is the difference with prompt attention.
The lesson here is that women MUST speak up and doctors NEED to LISTEN! I was a 139 pounds, hypertensive, diabetic, 53 year-old female, with a strong family history of heart disease, and a smoker coming into the ER with chest pain... and they missed it. I had a heart attack right under their noses and they missed it. I wish I would have screamed, cursed, and demanded to be examined... but like you, I felt intimidated.
Thank you for listening.
Vicki J. Kenter
Vicki thank you for writing - Women all over will benefit from this story!
More about Lois Trader the editor of LA Heart Health
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