Places to visit - the Hospital

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, in case anyone is actually out there visiting this blog!?! I was in the hosptal, so this post is about Lady of Lourdes Hospital and about Health.

While at the end of my Saturday shift volunteering at the James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield, National Park on July 16th I began to experience heart pain. It had actually been happening off and on for some months but it always went away. Twice in the Spring, it had gotten really bad - a squeezing pain like a muscle cramp in my chest and my left arm went numb with tingling in my fingers of that hand. On those occasions, I simply took another high blood pressure pill and chewed a baby aspirin and it went away. On the Saturday of July 16th, however it didn't go away. I had also experienced excessive sweating and lightheadedness while grocery shopping the day before as well, so I got really worried. The pain lasted all night, so in the morning, I called my sister and she came over and took me to the hospital. >p/> One of the volunteers with whom I had been chatting when the pain started, told me the same thing had happened to him and when his pain lasted all night, he told his wife he thought he should go to the hospital. He had a heart attack at the hospital. That helped to convince me to go. Also, he told me he'd had a catheterization and a stent and he explained it to me in such a way that it relieved some of the terror I had about going to the hospital and having to have that done.

At Lady of Lourdes Hospital, every single person I met from the emergency room check-in to the monitoring nurses in the emergency cubicle, was wonderfully kind, courteous and reassuring.

It was my good fortune to have as my roommate a lovely woman, my age, who had come in with almost exactly the same symptoms. She had her adult children visiting in shifts and both she and they were kind, thoughtful, entertaining and encouraging as we went through our tests and procedures.

I am telling you this now so that if anything similar happens to you, you won't hesitate to go straight to Lady of Lourdes which is now under the Virtua umbrella and is their Heart Center! A cardiac doctor saw me in Emergency, then I was taken to my shared room. The nurses on our floor were unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and even shared personal anecdotes about family and their lives. It was extraordinary.

The tests were all much easier than I had expected thanks to the skill and expertise of the surgical nursing team and the entire staff. The catheterization was very quick and nearly painless. They go in via your arm now, not the groin, and it really only took about 10 or 15 minutes. You are awake in some kind of twilight anaesthesia, but entirely pain free and there must have been some brief lack of consciousness because I really can't remember the doctor doing the procedure, it was so quick. It was way way easier than a colonoscopy but more or less on that scale.

Both my roommate and myself had that procedure and we both had echocardiograms which show how the valves are working and the heart muscle. The catheterization shows whether there are blockages or narrowing in the arteries, in which case they can put a stent in immediately.

To my great relief it turned out that I had suffered coronary artery insufficiency due to my high blood pressure medications no longer being effective. I had no blockages and needed no stents, just a new and stronger medication. My poor roommate, however wasn't so lucky. they found she had an aortic aneurism. So I got to go home, and she had to stay for another procedure.

Nobody ever wants to go to the hospital, but I assure you that if you do, Lady of Lourdes is wonderful. I don't honestly know how the staff can maintain such calm, patient and warm demeanor with all they have to see and do on a daily basis. They really are Heroes.

By the way, a little historical note. I was at Lady of Lourdes Hospital, in Camden, when I was 16 back in 1962. Our new development had so taxed the local sewage system that they were releasing raw sewage (or it was escaping) into the Pennsauken Creek where all of us kids regularly swam. Fourteen of us contracted hepititis from it, and by the time mine was caught and diagnosed it had gotten bad. I was YELLOW from the formerly whites of my eyes to my toes. Back in those days, there were still nuns working in the hospital and I remember even then how kind everyone was and how from my window I could see the younger nuns in the back yard of the convent. We have a history, Lady of Lourdes and me.

The DASH diet was on my list from the hospital and I had a book on it and I have been following it religiously - I was motivated! As you might guess, it is a fresh produce, plant based diet which cautions us to note the sodium in anything we consume that comes packaged and also the sugar content. Since I was already a vegetarian (probably why I had no blockages) that part was easy for me, but it took a little effort to get out of my lazy food habits (pizza) and start steaming vegetables to put over rice or mix with pasta and to make sure I incorporate blueberries, bananas, strawberries and other berries in my high fiber granola cereal every morning.

the reward of my food effort is that I feel wonderful again and so grateful to be alive. The moral of the story is, if you have chest pain, don't hesitate - go straight to Lady of Lourdes. They will take good care of you. By the way, another motivator was that my neighbor's father had died just two weeks earlier from a sudden heart attack and he was more than 15 years younger than I am. Don't smoke, eat fresh fruit and vegetables, and don't wait if you have chest pain.

By the way, here is how simple it can be to eat fresh: aside from the berries and granola for breakfast, you can get grated carrots at the grocery store, and wash and chop some broccoli or cauliflower and put low-fat cottage cheese on it for lunch, and you can steam those and other vegetables and mix them with penny pasta and a low fat sauce for dinner! Voila!

Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital opened in 1950, five years after I was born. The statue of Our Lady of Lourdes which sits atop the hospital was carved of Indiana granite in 1949. In 2011 it was damaged by an earthquake which also damaged the Washington Monument. Children in schools and parishioners all over South Jersey raised money to have the statue repaired and restored to her setting atop the hospital. She is now also crowned by a holo of lights and can be lit with different colors denoting a successful organ transplant, breast cancer awareness, heart health month, or, as was done recently, to celebrate the joining of Our Lady of Lourdes with the Virtua Health System. Camden City is lucky to have two stellar hospital to serve the surrounding communities, Cooper Hospital, and Our Lady of Lourdes.

Stay well my friends and Happy Trails! Jo Ann