Caren Chesler – My Heart Was Fixed But My Mind Was Damaged
Caren Chesler is a freelancer writer who recently shared her perspective as an adult CHD survivor in a New York Times article.
I told my doctor recently that I sometimes experience rapid heart rate. She wasn’t too concerned but gave me an EKG anyway, perhaps for liability purposes. I’m in my 50s, after all, a decade in which important organs often begin to show their wear.
A medical assistant came into the room and placed a dozen little tabs on my chest and legs and then attached little wires to them with clips that looked like telephone jacks.
The technology had certainly advanced from the 1970s, when I had my first EKG at the age of 12, before undergoing surgery to repair a holebetween the upper chambers of my heart.