Regaining Independence

Heart disease survivor Portia Rindos prepares a heart-healthy meal at home. Photo by Buatti-Ramos Photography Buatti-Ramos.To hear Portia Rindos tell it, she wasn’t doing much of anything right — eating unhealthy food, living with a lot of stress, being sedentary. At some level, she knew that was taking her down a path going nowhere good — she is a nurse, after all. And she certainly had the genes for heart disease: she was part of a large New York Italian family. Her father died at age 58 of, she suspects, sudden cardiac death. “It wasn’t something that we knew he had,” she said. “He just went to work one day and didn’t return. His brother had his first heart attack in his 40s.”

Travel precautions help people with heart disease.

Traveling to a faraway place doesn’t need to be off limits because you have heart disease or are a caretaker of someone who has had a cardiac event like heart attack or stroke. In fact, a few simple precautions can help make your trip a smooth one.

For stroke survivors with aphasia, physical or cognitive disabilities, emergencies like those our country experienced last year and in recent months — hurricanes, floods, wildfires, frigid fronts, earthquakes and mud floods — can pose life-threatening challenges. The only way to meet any of those challenges is to prepare ahead of time for these events. The breadth of possibilities of what may be required in an emergency is beyond the scope of this article, but we will give you a broad outline and direct you to resources with more detailed information.