Let's Talk About Cardiac Issues!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                        I have them, and several people I know do, including my own sister.

                                         Since the days following Julie Powell's passing, wonder has been expressed at how one could have died so young.  I will hazard a guess.  Not being connected to Powell or family, nor an MD myself, but based on my personal experience, I feel Julie either was not aware she had cardiac issues or had foreshadowings that she ignored.

                                              I speak from personal experience.  Readers on here know I was born two months premature, and with a congenital heart defect.  That was corrected on May 10, 1966, but eighteen years later, in June 1984, I developed something called atrial flutter, saw a cardiologist from then on, and was on and weaned off several heart medications.   In 2020, at the height of Covid, I discovered my heart was beating too rapidly to be normal.  I never felt a thing.  I had tachycardia, but, unlike many, I am one of those people who don't feel it.  There had been foreshadowing, years before, in another doctor's office, and that summer, 2020, when I became excessively tired, and my good friend, Nicholas, the cat, saved my life, knowing something was wrong, and staying by side till he thought I was saved.

                                                 The result was cardioversion, heart monitors, and then the ablation.  I was on Eliquis for six months, and Cardizem for two years.  I am now off the last, though I still take blood pressure medication.

                                                    I was lucky.  It was discovered by professionals, and something was done, and I survived.  I still pay gratitude to all at NYU Langone.

                                                      Julie was not so lucky.  I wish she had been.  I cannot speak of genetic connection in her case, but there may have been in mine.  My maternal grandfather died two years before I was born, at 67, in 1952.  He had a long cardiac history, and things were limited then so not much could be done.  I was fortunate, but not till the ablation did I ponder the grandfather I never met.

                                                        Like me, Julie might not have known, either.  Besides sadness at her passing, I am urging those out there--if you feel something, take action immediately.  And if you think something is wrong--even if you just think--take action immediately.  

                                                           It saved my life.  And it might have saved Julie's.