Almost all freshly-diagnosed heart patients are warned not to drive for a specific period of time following hospital discharge, ranging anywhere from 24 hours to several months, depending on the specific cardiac issue. And in the earliest days or weeks, we may have mixed emotions even thinking about getting behind the wheel of a car again.
Some of us might feel afraid to drive (“What if I have another cardiac emergency while driving by myself on the highway?”). A Swedish study that followed drivers living with chronic illness (including cardiovascular disease) over a 10-year period found that very few road accidents were directly caused by either the disease or its treatment after early driving restriction time periods had passed (just 0·8% of all cases). Despite those stats, the researchers reported that many individual drivers voluntarily surrendered their driving license post-diagnosis because of the personal decision that “my state of health was no longer compatible with safe driving.” (1)
Continue reading “How soon are heart patients safely fit to drive?”
Despite textbook heart attack symptoms, I was sent home with an acid reflux misdiagnosis by a man with the letters M.D. after his name from the Emergency Department in the same hospital where I worked! My reaction at the time was to feel embarrassed and apologetic because I’d just made a big fuss over “nothing”. I felt so embarrassed, in fact, that I even sent my hospital colleagues in Emergency a sheepish little thank you note the following day, apologizing once again for wasting their very valuable time. I felt so embarrassed, in fact, that when my heart attack symptoms continued (of course they did!), I refused to return to Emergency for two horrific weeks.
I was never a napper before my heart attack. Naps, I used to believe, were only for old people like my Dad, whose custom was to doze off after lunch for half an hour or so on the LaZBoy recliner in our farmhouse living room. But now, I love naps! And because I live with ongoing cardiac symptoms (thanks to a subsequent diagnosis of 
In 1907, 
Heart Sisters 
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters