by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

After surviving a misdiagnosed heart attack, I came home from the CCU (the intensive care unit for heart patients) feeling afraid to go to sleep at night. I felt a cold creeping dread that I would suffer another heart attack. Probably tonight. And probably fatal this time. I have since learned from many other freshly-diagnosed heart patients how remarkably common it is to be afraid to go to sleep in the the early days and weeks – if we no longer feel certain that we’ll be able to wake up.

The worst part was that even when I finally did fall asleep, I had frequent nightmares. They were always the same: having a heart attack on a plane (vividly reliving what had actually happened in real life during my last late night flight home from Ottawa to Vancouver).

But in these scary dreams, I was the only passenger on the flight. The cockpit door was open. I could see the empty seats where the Air Canada pilots should be at the controls. Just me, flying alone in an empty Boeing 787 at 40,000 feet. A terribly frightening nightmare.  Continue reading “Moral injury in cardiac misdiagnosis” →