This is a health one. A family history problem and not feeling heard by my GP.
My mum was 52 when she had 9 coronary bypass grafts. Her ischaemic heart disease was so bad that she went straight from angiography to theatre for her grafts, a matter of hours later. My aunt (mum’s sister) had heart disease and needed stents performing. I should say it was 30yrs ago. My mum is now deceased but my aunt is still alive at 90.
For some time I’ve felt breathless. Can’t get a full breath in, as it were. I also have what I can only describe as heaviness/pressure on my chest. Not with exercise but if I’m upset or stressed. I’m 58. My GP sent me for a chest X-ray which was fine.
My sister is 59. My niece called me this afternoon to say that sister had been taken from the dr to the specialist heart/lung department of Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester for urgent treatment following an an ECG. The consultant has said that she needs immediate stents and plans to do them tomorrow. When my sister told him she wasn’t able to do that and was very concerned re. COVID-19, he said even considering that risk, he was admitting her straight away. She wasn’t even allowed home to feed her horses/pack a bag. Astonishingly, she’d been seeing her GP for 3yrs+ for breathlessness, what she termed “unreasonable fatigue” and a sense of heaviness on her chest. In other words, the family history is there. It looms large. Only for the women not the brothers.
My sister and I take meds for cholesterol and high blood pressure. Have done for years. Neither of us have ever smoked. Not overweight and pretty fit for our age in terms of exercise (sister has horses) I have dogs and (gently) run/cycle.
My own GP wants to take me off HRT. I’ve refused because I know it can help stave off heart disease. I don’t want to come off it. Am scared to come off it. I have a telephone Appt with my own GP on Thursday to discuss my high BP and HRT (nothing to do with what’s happened to my sister today, the Appt was made last week).
AIBU to feel let down by GP care. My mum and her sister had heart disease at a reasonably young age, my sister has it, I have symptoms although my gp isn’t listening to me, I feel.
What can I do. I really got the feeling my own gp felt I was “overreacting” and has said categorically, I MUST come off HRT.