Author: Melanie Medina
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Buckle Up for Flu Season!
Flu season is well underway, and every flu season brings out two types of people. For one type, the flu shot is a necessity; it is a responsibility; it is an obligation. For the other type, the flu shot is painful; it is insignificant; it is an inconvenience. Ultimately, this is an unfortunate dichotomy. Opposing…
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So Long as They’re Healthy
So Long as He’s Healthy “So long as he’s healthy,” she said. Inwardly, I cringe And my heart weeps a little. I ask myself, “But what if he’s not?” Will you not love him? Will you be unable to find happiness? Will you wish you didn’t have him? What do you mean by, “So…
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Reflections of a Heart Family
Sometimes six years in the CHD world does not seem like an awfully long time, and sometimes it feels like we have been here forever. When I think back on the early days of my daughter’s diagnosis and birth, I am amazed at the obstacles we have overcome. We would learn something was amiss during…
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My Heart Journey — So Far
When my daughter was 4 years old, her doctor heard a faint clicking sound in her heart at a well-child visit. We discovered she had a bicuspid aortic valve and several other heart defects. She is now 19 and has always been asymptomatic and hasn’t needed surgery. Because a bicuspid valve is congenital, her cardiologist…
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Confusion About Preventative Use of Aspirin Could Have Potentially Harmful Consequences for Heart Attack Survivors
Aspirin has been in the news a lot lately, and it has been very confusing for some patients. Updated guidelines that were released earlier this year state that aspirin should not be used in routine primary prevention for heart attacks due to lack of net benefit. This caught the attention of the media, yet news…
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Transitioning from Hospital to Home
After the much-anticipated birth of a child with CHD, the reality of bringing him or her home can be both exciting and terrifying. While your child was in the hospital, doctors and nurses were his or her primary caregivers. Once you’ve returned home, you are faced with taking over care, which can be very scary.…
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My Truths as a Heart Mom
By: Maureen Snider Those first stormy days are a blur. The discovery of the heart defect, the diagnosis, the worry, the guilt, the fear: they all blend together like paint on a watercolor landscape. Almost 14 years later, I can still summon that frightful feeling in the pit of my stomach as if it were…
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A Heart Patient Fights for His Health
By: Scott Eitman In 1988, at the age of 24, I had just taken my first job after graduating from Indiana University. I wasn’t feeling well and made an appointment with a doctor whom I had never seen before. During that appointment, he asked about my murmur. I knew from all the physicals I had…
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My Miraculous Open Heart Surgery
By David Weinfurtner My battle against heart problems began when I was a child. At the age of five, I had a convulsion and passed out. My doctor in a small town in Central Wisconsin passed on hospitalizing me. He sent me home with my parents, and I was supposed to just rest in bed.…
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Lessons of the Heart
By Jennifer Snead Chavez I suffered a heart attack three years ago. Well, suffered is the word people seem to use most often, but it doesn’t really describe my experience. While it was unpleasant, a tad scary, inconvenient and eye-opening, there was very little suffering on my part. In fact, I think there was…