A Heart Disease Veteran at Just Age 12 (5/4/2012)

A Heart Disease Veteran at Just Age 12

Survivor stresses importance of asking questions and pushing for answers.

By Serena GordonHealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, May 4 (HealthDay News) -- Even youngsters who seem to be in perfect health can be at risk for heart disease. Just ask Heather Link.

When she was 12, Heather was the picture of health as a competitive swimmer. But, several weeks after a dental checkup, she was suddenly engaged in the fight of her life.

She had a condition known as infective endocarditis, which develops when bacteria enter the bloodstream and infect the lining of the heart, a blood vessel or the heart's valves. In Heather's case, a small cut that had occurred during her dental checkup gave the bacteria a way in.

At first, she had no idea she was even sick. But, after some time, she started to feel as if she might have the flu. She had a fever, felt achy and had chills. Her fever spiked to 104 degrees Fahrenheit at one point. Her mother repeatedly took her to the doctor, but it seemed as if Heather just had a viral infection, such as the flu.

But when her condition worsened, Heather's mother took her to an emergency room in Buffalo, N.Y. There, she recalled, a spinal tap revealed the bacteria that were infecting her heart. The infection had seriously damaged her heart's aortic and mitral valves, and she needed immediate open heart surgery to repair the damage.

Though just a kid then, Link recalled not being scared before the surgery. "I was so weak and so sick at that point, that I don't really remember much of what was going on," she said.

Several weeks later, she started to have symptoms of heart failure, such as severe shortness of breath, and she had another surgery to fix the repairs that had come undone. But her symptoms continued.

"I couldn't keep any food in," she recalled. "I was losing weight. All I could do was lie on the couch and watch TV," she said, noting the sharp contrast to how she had been living before the surgeries.

Ultimately, she had a third surgery, this time at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and felt better for a while. She went home and started seventh grade, but by December she was having chest pains.

Not taking any chances, her parents took her back to Boston, and she went into cardiac arrest when she got to Brigham and Women's Hospital. By now, her heart had been under so much stress that her doctors decided to put her on a ventricular assist device. For about a week, the device took over the work of her heart and lungs, allowing them to rest. Then there was one last surgery, to remove it.

"The ventricular assist device allowed my own heart to recover and saved me from needing a heart transplant, which would have changed my life dramatically," Link said.

Instead, she was back in the pool about nine months after the device was removed. And doctors told her that she probably owed her life to swimming.

"They told me that competitive swimming saved my life because I was in such good shape and had a strong heart," Link said. "If I were just a normal kid, they said I probably wouldn't have made it."

However, Link said, her heart never completely recovered. It works at about 70 or 75 percent of what it once did, she said, but she's had no more surgeries and is as active as she wants to be. She's 26 now and teaches first grade.

She also works to raise awareness of ventricular assist devices through Abiomed, the company that manufactured her device. She wants people to know that there are viable options to heart transplants.

And for others who might find themselves in a similar situation, Link stressed the importance of being aware of all options and not being afraid to ask questions.

"If my mom hadn't pushed so hard for me to see the doctors in Boston, I wouldn't be here," she noted. "As much as I hate what happened to me at the time, people have learned from it, and in our area, things have changed now that the doctors are more aware that this can happen."

Source: http://www.womenshealt.gov/new/news/headlines/660254.cfm/

FORCED ADOPTION: WE'RE SORRY

FORCED ADOPTION: WE'RE SORRYBy The Hoopla

February 29, 2012

“(A nurse) started strapping up my right wrist. I was puzzled, I didn’t know what she was doing, and then she secured me to the side of the bed… I became unconscious. And I don’t know how long I was unconscious for, but when I eventually came to, my son was gone.”

* In latest news: A NATIONAL apology and financial reparation is owed to parents and children who were victims of forced adoption policies, a Senate committee has found.

The community affairs committee says the practice was wrong not just by today’s standards but by the laws of the time.

The committee has called for governments and institutions involved in forced adoption from the 1940s to the 70s to set up grievance processes and provide redress where wrongdoing is established.

And it says the states should provide financial reparation schemes for the victims.

Did you watch the Four Corners program Give or Taken? on forced adoption this week?

It was deeply affecting and, at times, harrowing to watch. No doubt many tears of sympathy were shed across the nation for the women bullied and coerced into giving up their babies.

The program was also a testament to the endurance of mother love – perhaps the most powerful of all human emotions.

Reporter Geoff Thompson talked to some of the women who lost their children. They told the truth about the way they were treated in the hours after they gave birth. Heartbreaking.

Until the 1970s, having a child out of wedlock was seen as a social disgrace and young women who fell pregnant were either sent away or actively encouraged to give up their babies for adoption. A ‘clean break’ it was called. Women were given sedatives and drugs to dry up their milk.

Something we forget when we talk about the 'good old days'.

Authorities argued this was done with good intentions, but now a Senate Committee has heard evidence that tells a very different story. It will release its report tomorrow.

Many young, single mothers were never given the option of keeping their child.

Unmarried mothers automatically had their hospital records marked ready for adoption – even before giving birth.

There is evidence that some were sedated. Others were denied access to their babies as they were making crucial decisions about their future. As a result, these women have suffered terrible emotional distress throughout their lives.

One person who examined a variety of evidence said:

“I have no doubt that some illegal activity occurred, I have no doubt that women were subject to what nowadays… we would call abuse; that forged consents occurred.”

Over the past decade individual hospitals and the West Australian Government have offered an official apology to the women who lost their children.

“Given or Taken?” Reported by Geoff Thompson and presented by Kerry O’Brien will be replayed on Tuesday, February 28 at 11.35 pm on ABC 1 and can also be seen in ABC News 24 on Saturdays at 8pm, on iview or at abc.net.au/4corners.

Source: http://thehoopla.com.au/forced-adoption//

Car, TV Ownership Tied to Higher Risk for Heart Attack (1/11/2012)

Car, TV Ownership Tied to Higher Risk for Heart Attack

But getting active during work and leisure hours can lower the odds, study finds.
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11 (HealthDay News) -- People who own a car and a television tend to be at increased risk for heart attack, a new study finds.

On the other hand, people in developed and developing countries who are physically active during work and leisure time have a significantly lower risk of heart attack, the researchers found.

The findings come from an analysis of data from more than 29,000 people in 52 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. The study was published online Jan. 11 in the European Heart Journal.

"Until now, few studies have looked at the different aspects of physical activity both at work and during leisure time in relation to the risk of heart attacks," first author Dr. Claes Held, an associate professor at Uppsala Clinical Research Center and the cardiology department at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden, said in a journal news release.

"Much is already known about the association between physical activity and cardiovascular risk, but what this study adds, among many other things, is a global perspective. The study shows that mild to moderate physical activity at work, and any level of physical activity during leisure time reduces the risk of heart attack, independent of other traditional risk factors in men and women of all ages, in most regions of the world and in countries with low, middle or high income levels. Interestingly, heavy physical labor at work did not protect against heart attacks," Held said.

The data analysis revealed that people who did light or moderate physical activity at work had a 22 percent and 11 percent lower risk of heart attack, respectively, than those who did little physical activity at work. However, heavy physical labor did not reduce heart attack risk.

Compared to those who did little physical activity during leisure time, the risk of heart attack was 13 percent lower for people who did mild physical activity and 24 percent lower for those who did moderate or strenuous activity during leisure time.

People who owned both a car and TV had a 27 percent higher risk of heart attack than those who owned neither a car nor TV.

A higher percentage of people in low-income nations had sedentary jobs and did less physical activity in their leisure time, compared to those in middle- and high-income countries, the researchers noted.

"These differences in PA [physical activity] were most pronounced regarding leisure-time activity," they wrote. "This may partly be explained by differences in education and other socio-economic factors. In addition, this may also reflect differences in culture and in climate." It's less likely that an individual will performing leisure-time physical activity in tropical or hot climate zones than in more temperate areas of the world, they added.

All people should be encouraged to get daily moderate exercise in order to prevent heart disease, the researchers concluded.

"The data have some real-life implications," Held said. One suggestion could be getting lower-income countries more involved in promoting physical activity as their societies start to use more labor-saving devices, he said.

Source: http://www.womenshealth.gov/new//news/headlines/660549.cfm/