Diagnosis – Louise

 

Louise was well into treatment before she heard the term 'heart failure'.

Written testimony

In March 2020 my new cardiologist recommended adding a new heart medication called Entresto. He sent me for lab tests including one I had never heard of called NT-Pro-BNP. After seeing the results I said to him  ‘OK I’ll look that up. And what does it tell you?’  He said ‘oh, I need it to document your heart failure, to get approval of this drug for you.’ And I’m like ‘WHAT? You needed it to document my WHAT?’ And he calmly says  ‘you have heart failure.’ And I said ‘well why would nobody have told me this?’ Panic was creeping in. I had no idea how long I’ve had heart failure. Was it from when my EF was low? Before I got the ICD? Or maybe after one of my STEMI heart attacks? I’m not quite sure when it started, but he informed me that I definitely had heart failure now. 

I was pretty well in shock – it was hard to believe. I knew nothing. Nobody in my world had ever had any heart issues. But I did start taking that new drug in April. And I thought OK, this is going to cure everything, but I figured I better start paying more attention to the details. Because either I was in denial, which could possibly be the case, or I was on the way to being fixed. But I was sure I hadn’t ever heard the words heart failure before, from anyone.

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