Dying to Tell: A Survivor's Perspective On Broken Heart Syndrome

By Cheryl Lawson

After a near death experience and debilitating illness, Cheryl knew it was time to turn her life around beginning with a written personal account of her story. Providing a glimpse into the world of Broken Heart Syndrome, a rare disorder and silent killer that falls in the category of heart disease known as stress induced cardiomyopathy, she chronicles her recovery providing factual and useful information for others. For the approximately 715,000 people who experience heart attacks each year, roughly 2% are Broken Heart Syndrome related with women being far more vulnerable than men, carrying the greatest risk to those ages 50 and older. This book lends hope toward change in the survival rate and may be used as a helpful resource in averting the fallout from the damages of stress that plague modern society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cheryl Lawson
• Release date: Oct 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310301353

Cheryl Lawson

After a near death experience and debilitating illness, Cheryl knew it was time to turn her life around beginning with a written personal account of her story. She is a former library director and a survivor speaker for the American Heart Association, where more information about her experience can be found at their “Stories from the Heart” website. Her contribution to the field of Library and Information Science includes several published articles in addition to a co-authored textbook. Besides working on her second book related to Broken Heart Syndrome, she enjoys lecturing about the subject, practicing yoga, and meditation.

Book preview

DYING TO TELL

A SURVIVOR'S PERSPECTIVE ON BROKEN HEART SYNDROME

Cheryl Lawson

Copyright © 2014 Cheryl Lawson

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter One: A Heart Breaking Story

Chapter Two: Disease and the Heart

Chapter Three: An Emotional Tragedy

Chapter Four: The Mind, Heart, and Body Connection

Chapter Five: A Heart Full of Appreciation

Chapter Six: Be Thankful

About Cheryl Lawson

Sources

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my mother who taught me the law of attraction and to hold onto the belief that all things are truly possible. No less admired, my father helped me to develop courage and tenacity for which I am grateful.

Additional thanks to Ebook Launch for their tireless effort in assisting the editing process.

PROLOGUE

It would take the experience of three heart attacks and years of study before I learned how magnificent the human heart is. A tiny organ as small as an adult fist, yet mighty enough, it can pump nearly five liters of blood throughout the entire body in approximately the same amount of time it takes an Olympic athlete to run a 400-meter race, yet so often it is taken for granted.

Thoughts about the actual nature of the heart have been discussed for centuries. The Ancient Egyptians envisioned it ascending to the heavens with the soul in the afterlife, while its essence—the source of man's courage and loyalty— was revered by the Greeks.

Many religious believers linked the heart to the Creator, a direct line of communication in times of prayer and supplication. Poets from Keats to Shakespeare breathed life into the heart— a vessel of our emotions connecting one person to another— its uniqueness a character trait of simply being human.

Latest findings reveal that the heart is far more resilient than previously known. Due to its cellular structure, it is remarkably adaptive to a wide variety of genetic and extrinsic factors that allow it to make a stunning comeback despite the experience of failure. Under less drastic circumstances, such as a temporary malfunction, the heart can even go into hibernation to offset its own energy supply.

In the book The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing, by Mimi Guarneri, we learn firsthand that basing diagnosis about the heart merely on the output of an echocardiogram or from beats registered through a stethoscope do not do it justice, as it is scientifically proven that the heart possesses a unique language, intelligence, and memory that allow it to make decisions on its own accord.

Why You Should Read This

Learning to appreciate your heart is simple—take care of it and it will take care of you. Determined to put this into practice in healing my own heart, I set out on a journey to identify the root cause of Broken Heart Syndrome (BHS), a heart disorder I was diagnosed with in 2008. During my quest to find out what I could do to prolong my life and alleviate the distress of this crippling disorder, I uncovered a wealth of information that goes far beyond the surface of my illness. There, I uncovered facts that had not been revealed in biology or physiology class about the mind's influence over the body—a unique mind-body connection—triggered not only by our feelings, and emotions, but particularly in accordance with our thoughts.

The power of the mind and its influence over the body has been the subject of many books. During the late forties the writer Napoleon Hill wrote about committing one's desires to mind, placing full attention to the outcome then as one believes confidently, in the knowledge of knowing, knowing what one wants, what one wants will surely come to pass.[1] Hill goes so far as to reference a poem by Ernest William Henley in saying, Henley is correct in the phrase, 'we are the masters of our fate, the captains of our destiny.[2]' But, as Hill is so careful to add, there is a universal power at play here that influences our very surrounding; drawing circumstances, events, activities, people—even money our way, once we decide to define our life's purpose."

Og Mandino author of The World's Greatest Salesman, fashioned the words simply, I can condition my mind to meet every challenge which the failure avoids. So powerful was his motivation to convince himself that the influence of the mind bears incredible influence over the physical state of our bodies that he composed ten scrolls that he committed to read aloud daily as reinforcement of the fact.

Magical Mind, Magical Body by Deepak Chopra, M.D. offers example after example of instances where placing one's attention on the