Advocate for Your Life
I recently acknowledged on Facebook the seventh anniversary of my January 23, 2016, heart attack–and the quick dismissal of my symptoms the day before by my (former) general practitioner.
The Doctor Dude (we nicknamed him Pocket Doc) must’ve been worried when he heard I was in the Heart Tower at Mission Hospital the next day because he sent his medical student to check on me, and he himself called me the day I arrived home, seven days later. I refused to talk to either of them, but I did write about the adventure in what became a viral Huffington Post essay, and it has been excerpted in the books of several other authors since then, each of which I have sent to him with the appropriate pages marked.
He never liked overweight people. It was easy for him to dismiss my breathing complaints as simply a result of being overweight or of anxiety–or of both. And so he did. I left with an RX for an anti-anxiety drug. The next morning we awoke to 20+ inches of snow, which in North Carolina is cause for any- and everything to shut down for days. I still felt miserable and got into the shower to see if it would help. In an instant, I knew John needed to call 9-1-1 and that this was a heart attack. The ambulance couldn’t reach our house because of the snow, so a cadre of (cute and strapping) firemen arrived to take me to the gas station where the ambulance had gotten stuck and was waiting for me. I almost didn’t go with them because, by the time they had gotten to us, the pain had subsided somewhat. They insisted I go, thankfully.
Please read my Huffington Post essay from that week in the hospital, and especially if you are a woman, insist that your doctor pay attention to you and not dismiss you as an hysterical female. It may well save your life–or someone else’s. Do not worry that they will discover you “just” have heartburn or gas or a panic attack rather than a heart attack. So what? They are there to help you, to test you, to diagnose you, and most of all TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOU rather than dismiss you. If it turns out to be anxiety, so be it. At least no one died. Don’t let shame be the barrier to your continuing to live.
Here’s what I wish I had said to Pocket Doc in his office:
“I don’t believe you have paid adequate attention to what I am saying to you. In fact, I believe you are letting your dislike of overweight women cloud your judgment and are performing for your med student. I would like you to consider that this is something other than anxiety and provide more adequate medical care. If you do not, I will leave here and go to the ER where I can be seen by someone whose job it is to listen to their patients more carefully than you have. If they find that my lung has collapsed (which is what I thought had happened at the time), my attorney will contact you.” Or perhaps I should have said all that while putting on my coat and leaving.
But I didn’t say that. And I came very close to death, with a widowmaker heart attack the next day because of an almost 100% blockage in my lower anterior descending artery. No good doctor will tell you that you are overreacting. In fact, they will tell you that they are glad you had it checked out because women’s heart attacks are notorious for not fitting the symptoms displayed by men in the same situation.
