My Story: Dealing with Doctors and My Heart Health

TC shares her experience dealing with doctors leading up to her diagnosis of congestive heart failure.

OBOS Today: So that is a very striking the story of your, that first urgent care doctor not telling you what was going on. In hindsight, do you know why he acted that way?

TC: Yes, I think he did not have enough information to tell me that that’s what it is in his professional experience I’m sure he knew what it was.

But he had not run any labs in blood work or anything like that, so he could not say definitively, this is what you have. So, I actually owe my life to that doctor, because had that doctor not insisted that I go to a hospital, I probably would have honestly blown him off I’m thinking this is urgent care what do they know, they treat broken bones.

I really, really almost blew him off had it not been for his insistence, along with my boyfriend at the time said, no I think we may need to do something more serious, because I did not feel good that day.

And it honestly took three days. I was in the hospital probably about three days and the on-call doctor was basically saying we’re going to go ahead and let you go home today, I just want you to see one more doctor, because what they had done this got enough fluid off of my body, so I was fine.

And I was presenting as a great patient at that time, and he said, I just want you to see one more doctor. If this doctor signs off on it, then yeah, we’ll go ahead and let you go home.

So, I’d actually packed my bags, and was ready to leave because that’s what we thought, because I felt fine. And that’s when the cardiologist came in and kind of asked few more questions about my day.

I have a brother that’s two years older than me, and he actually has congestive heart failure as well and had been diagnosed years prior to that.

But, again, I did not associate that with me, because my brother was overweight and I was not. I was very active, I jog, I played golf, I walk I did all the—you know, and I was not a large size.

However, after all of the tests, and all of the things that they did, they took all of the fluid off my body, I walked in wearing a size 12 ladies dress and when I left out, I was wearing a size 8 that’s how much fluid they got off of my body.

And I usually give those dress sizes because women can really relate to the dress size.