READER RESPONSE:Holistic preventative programme helps cardiac patients to regain a healthy lifestyle
Re: Prevention programme is on the chopping block, Dr Muiris Houston, Medical Matters, November 17th
DEAR SIR,
I had two heart attacks in March 2008 and after initial excellent treatment on the day in the cardiac unit in Navan was transferred on the second attack to Beaumont where Dr Thomas Gumbrielle did the stent work.
On the urging of several people, including my own GP in Longwood, Dr Bill McNamara, I applied to and was accepted onto the cardiac rehab programme in Mullingar Hospital.
Apart altogether from giving one a sense of confidence on the matter, as one does suffer an enormous blow to one’s self-confidence, the programme did several things more or less at once: it instilled the sense of responsibility for one’s own health and its management; showed clear road signs to managing one’s health as a regime; and gave a clear understanding on the issues of diet and, very valuably, how to read labels on food packaging.
Not being a smoker at least removed that element from the equation, and I drink wine only socially, but I have a very sweet tooth.
I reformed my diet and stuck fairly closely to the suggested guidelines as to that, giving up sugar, cakes, biscuits, sweets, and salt, and have kept to that to date.
The first six weeks were not easy in dietary terms, but if I hadn’t had the support and ongoing processes with the programme, I don’t doubt I’d have been in trouble.
The Heartwatch programme is very good value in that it keeps many at-risk cardiac patients out of hospital and gives the putative patient a template on which to base his/her daily behaviour, within parameters of activity reasonable to the entire process, and indeed gives an holistic sense of it.
I know that people walk away having done it and think, “Well, I’ve done that and needn’t bother any more”, but I found that those I know who’ve undertaken the process have not abandoned it.
I gather from my GP, who is very interested in cardiac issues, that people forget after about a year. The cardiac consultant in Mullingar asked me recently if I could remember the incident. And I said, “Yes, the pain was one which would never leave my memory.”
I’ve been lucky with my GP, his clinical staff and his partners, plus I’ve a niece who is a GP in Monaghan and she’s also very interested in the issues.
But the value of the programme is that it does keep cardiac patients out of hospital and self-aware, and any diminution of its funding would prove to be a very costly longer term outturn for the HSE.
Without being a fanatic about it, I treat myself fairly in the matter and, I hope, sensibly and I’ve worked out roughly the cost of saving my life in terms of a budget and calculated it at about €100,000.
I feel a moral obligation to all those who dealt with me on the day and afterwards to see that their efforts aren’t wasted.
Not that they make me feel that, but I’m conscious of how much I owe them all. As a public patient on a medical card, I have been through two eye operations and have been treated terrifically through all the many post-operative processes, and I’ve no complaints other than to wish it hadn’t happened at all.
But to reprise the issue of the Heartwatch programme: it’s an effective way for the HSE and the State to act in a preventive way and must lead to savings in the processes of healthcare and administration.
Ciarán MacGonigal,
Edgeworthstown,
Co Longford.