My mum was told in a very unexpected manner by the her GP about 4 years ago that she has heart failure. Due to the brief and unexpected nature of this we took it with a pinch of salt especially that doctors have never said anything about it since. Having read up about her symptoms on the web I am now concerned that nothing has been said about her heart failure since and frustrated that she hasn’t been given any advice for lifestyle or reasoning for the medication she is on. She still doesn’t think she has heart failure and puts her swollen ankles down to rheumatism, swollen tummy to eating too much and wheezing down to asthma. I feel that it is up to me to tell her what’s going on but have no idea about how to break it to her. What can I do?
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Jessstar10
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Ask your mum to visit the doctor and ask her if you can go with her to back her up about her ailments she thinks she's got and then bring up the sun next while your there with her. Good 3.
I'm sorry to hear of your mum's diagnosis. Please don't use Google as the info is usully outdated, completely wrong or just not applicable to your mum. Forums like this one & the Pumping Marvellous charity (Facebook group & website) are invaluable for advice & help. Has your mum been referred to a heart failure nurse, under NICE guidelines, she should be if they're available in her area. They are able to arrange tests, liase with cardiologists/GP's, prescribe medication etc. They will also be able to explain what the condition means, what to expect, how to manage her symptons & why she is on certain medication. The first thing I would do is ask the GP for a referral. Is she under a cardiologist?
As her symptoms appear to be as evident or even worse since medication began I would strongly suggest you and mum should go to her doctor and discuss the matter more fully and ask to be referred to a specialist for more tests. Dogmatic is the dress of the day! As previously said, unless the web site is backed by the NHS, do NOT trust the results, they can be old, unjust, unprofessional and down right dangerous or even worse, a money making scam with little or no consideration to ones actual health
As others here have said, the best thing is to push the GP for more information and referrals.
I went in to my GP after my dentist noticed what appeared to him to be Kussmaul Sign (he saw my heartbeat on the side of my neck when I got into the chair for a root canal) - within an hour or so I was being told by the GP she suspects HF, and by the end of the week I was in the Rapid Access Chest Pain clinic for tests. Chatting with others in the RACP wait area made it clear to me the speed of referral was normal for suspected HF - I'm surprised your mum has been four years into a GP thinking she might have HF but no further testing and referral to a cardiologist.
Time to push-push-and more push, HF is nothing to play around with.
Thanks everyone for the good advice. She has been to a cardiologist but he focused on her atrial fibrillation and has discharged her now as the cardio version she had worked. She had an angiogram as well and arteries came back all clear (which of course is great) but no one has mentioned the heart failure. Yes I will persuade her to go back to the doctor with me in tow.
Good luck everyone who has responded who has been affected by heart disease!
I have been on this site like forever with questions about my own mother’s chf symptoms. Her doctors have let her and me down with their failure to explain what was going on. I have been my mother’s caretaker for 7 yrs now and little did I know she has had problems before she even came here to live with us. She too had afib and she has a pacemaker. So she has an EP and a cardiologist. No one let us know that her condition was advancing and they were still continuing to treat her as a patient who had all the time in the world - and she was in her 90’s! Still offering a chance for an AV node ablation or different meds to treat her tachycardia ( like Amiodarone).
Finally, she had a new echo done. She now had moderate to severe stenosis of her aorta and mitral valve regurgitation. We ended up in the ER one day about a month ago because she was filling up with fluid and she couldn’t urinate. Blood tests revealed end stage chf. Finally an answer - but her doctors knew it was happening for a while, but didn’t explain anything to us. Finally, her PCP made a referral to hospice 3 weeks ago much to my surprise. So in one month, she went from heart failure to end stage. But I suspect it was happening starting last summer. I couldn’t keep up with doctor appts anymore things were so out of hand.
Make her doctors explain everything to you. Good or bad. Now that my mother is in hospice, they took her off some meds and added some new comfort meds. She actually feels better now than before. And her EP wanted her to take Amiodarone recently! Puleeeze!
I don’t know why the doctors were stringing us along for so long. I am the one who felt things weren’t right. Follow your instincts and ask questions. Seek second opinions if you have to. I hope doctors understand that it’s better to know than NOT to know.
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