Sharon Sakson was walking into her kitchen to make a sandwich one February afternoon when a sudden burst of what felt like indigestion made her change her mind. She went to bed, hoping the pain would pass quickly. Instead, Sakson, then 51, lay there for hours, listening to her six show dogs bark in the background as the crushing sensation in her chest became so intense, she could barely breathe. Finally, the agony subsided, but when it returned the following day, a friend insisted on calling an ambulance. At the hospital, doctors informed the Pennington, New Jersey, resident that she'd had a heart attack, one that had left the lower part of her heart damaged.
Five years later, "I feel like I have a sword over my head," she says. "Every time I get a pain, I'm afraid it's another attack and that this time I might not survive." What hurts even worse: She suspects her heart attack could have been avoided.
When Sakson was just 40, her blood pressure was high enough that her gynecologist suggested she see a specialist. It remained elevated at each subsequent annual visit to the new physician, yet that doctor prescribed only one low-dose medication for years, despite overwhelming evidence of the dangers of uncontrolled hypertension—and National Institutes of Health treatment guidelines, which urge doctors to increase the dosage or add a second drug until the numbers are normal.
Source: Reader’s Digest November 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment