Zephyr/Photo Researchers
Top, the narrowing of a femoral artery (in red). Above, a catheter and stent are used to open up a blockage of a coronary artery.
Posted on 06/18/2006 12:08:54 PM PDT by neverdem
Diagnosis
1. Symptoms
"I'm not going to lose my mom," the young man's voice cracked with feeling. Beside him a half-dozen men and women in scrubs swarmed around the gurney rolling the woman into a cubicle in the I.C.U. The patient's face had a deathly pallor, her light brown hair was dark with sweat, her mouth was open and her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe. "We'll do our best," the doctor assured him, as he observed the woman and the monitors that showed just how sick she was. The young man, who was in his mid-20's, grabbed the doctor's arm as he turned to follow the patient. "No — you have to save her," he answered fiercely. "You have to."
His mother had been fine that morning, the young man told the doctor. She went to work just as she did every day. But then the phone rang, and she learned that her husband of more than two decades had been killed in a crash. She rushed to the site, found his body and collapsed next to him, sobbing and shouting his name as if she were trying to wake him. She lay next to her husband, cradling him in her arms until his body was taken away. Two hours later, she collapsed again, and this time she couldn't get up.
The son paused and roughly rubbed the tears from his face with his sleeve. When she got home, his mother told his sister that her chest hurt and that she felt as if she couldn't breathe. The ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital. "The doctors there told us she'd had a heart attack," the young man continued, "and that she was fixing to have another one." He and his two sisters were terrified. They had already...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Good posting of the article about the 'broken heart'. My dad who was in exceptionally good health at age 78 died a little less than two years after my mom died. They were sweethearts their entire lives. He hung on for as long as he did, I'm convinced, because of his strong Christian belief that one must never voluntarily give up this life but to live til God calls us home. But when he did die, he was sitting at the kitchen table talking to friends, and simply laid his head on his arms on the table, and was instantly gone. The pathologist said his heart and kidneys for unknown reasons ceased functioning.
life
I knew one couple where the wife had been an invalid for years, and died. Within two weeks after the funeral, her husband, who had been her caretaker for years, died of a heart attack.
My dad passed away and my mom followed just a few months later. No real reason, she just seemed to give up on life.
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