What is my story?
„I was left alone in a hospital hallway with terrible chest pain refractory to any medication. Nobody knew what was going on. So they sent me home.“
Do you know that feeling when you are totally out of control of some situation? That happened to me in July 2020, I was 34, healthy, fit, very active. Until I was not.
My myocardial bridge was found after a lengthy process of unnecessary examinations. On ER I was told I was too young and too healthy to have a heart attack, my troponine level is just below the limit values, so I never made it to cardiologist. I was told it was stress. A panic attack. Anxiety. Reflux. Borelia. Asthma. Post-breakup phase. I was told I observe myself too much.
They said it was everything but a bad heart. And I believed them. After three major episodes of a demonstration heart attack, I trusted my doctors that it was all in my head.
Until I got to see one of the greatest heart specialists in Czech Republic and he didn’t leave me alone for hours in the hallway, he didn’t sent me home this time signed as a difficult patient. He was interested to help me.
He kept looking and did the proper tests. And he found what was happening with me – I have a birth anomaly called myocardial bridge and this probably caused all my episodes and changed my life in many aspects. Yes, it was asymptomatic my whole life – until it was not.
After all those episodes I was a young woman trapped in a body that felt like I am in the winter of my life and now, three years later I am still not where I was used to be, as my body is still recovering and I still have my myocardial bridge.
As Dr. Jessie Gruman once said: „I have felt like a healthy person who has been accidentally drop-kicked into a foreign country: I don’t know the language, the culture is unfamiliar, I have no idea what is expected of me, I have no map and I desperately want to find my way home.”
So I promised myself I don’t let another woman to go through this like me. I don’t want a woman with a heart attack to be left alone in the hallway for hours in pain that no medication is working. I don’t want a woman with a heart attack to be sent home with a prescription for anti-anxiety medication or reflux pills and signed as a difficult patient.
That’s why I’m trying to spread awareness about the specific diagnosis of MINOCA heart attack and also myocardial bridges, who are not as benign as believed for so many years. And I am trying to find those women who, like me back then, are now sitting in a hospital corridor in pain, alone, without a proper diagnosis and noone cares that this is a really serious situation.
I care. And I want to let them know that they are not alone.
With love and loving heart, Katerina