cardiologist said ‘just hang in there” and when I complained about the daily chest pains, he said it was ‘probably a touch of heartburn.’ At that, the red lights went off in my head. When the coughing of blood became daily, I kissed the old doctors goodbye and headed for the specialists.
A brand new world opened up, but the word ‘transplant’ was the sacred word of the day. A word that would soon come to taunt me. I almost fainted the first time I heard it, I thought the heart could repair itself…little did I know. Then I saw a congestive heart failure specialist, he said ‘transplant’. I went to another cardiologist, again the word ‘transplant’ crept into the conversation. i went to get a 3rd opinion just in case, and again, I could hear the echoed word ‘transplant’ bouncing off the white Formica in the room.
Since then I’ve read everything I could get my hands on, internet, books, articles, anything. I’ve heard of all sorts of cures, from heart nets to shrink the heart, left ventricular assistance devices, some type of cuffing and blood pumping system which I can’t even remember, ventricular reconstruction to actually cut out the dead scarred section and to sew it back up to endless vitamin and supplement cures. Every single idea I have taken seriously and I have seriously passed these notions by my heart failure specialist and each time, I get that condescending look, with the inevitable shaking of the head. His one comment to me was ‘I shouldn’t read too much’. HA! the only thing I ever got from him were a few pamphlets telling me what I already knew, exalting the upmost holy trinity of class IV lessons. No salt. Watch the liquid intake and exercise.
So my