One year ago, I was given the responsibility of taking care of a patient who had suffered from heart disease called Mr. Brown. Although I did not know how to treat the illness by then, I learned a lot from the treatment process. Since I was directly involved in taking care of Mr. Brown, the physician who was in charge if treating him shared a lot of information about heart disease with me. However, he avoided giving me information that would lead to violation of confidentiality principle.
One of the things I learned about Mr. Brown’s condition is that he had bilateral inspiratory rales. Initially, the 
physician thought that Mr. Brown had inferior or anterior infarction. Upon close examination, however, he realized that he had posterior myocardial infarction. However, he was not suffering from proximal LAD lesion and thus, he was in a stable condition. The physician also noted confirmed that Mr. Brown did not have distal disease. By then, Mr. Brown had 67 years. Despite this, the diagnosis results indicated that he had thoracic aortic aneurysm. Due to his old age, he needed extra care since did not recover quickly. At the same time, he used to live far away from the place where his relatives lived. In fact, he used to live alone. A few hours before suffering from the heart attack, he had complained to me that he had been feeling pain at epigastric region. Initially, I did not take the issue serious since he had told me earlier that he had been feeling pain around hypo-gastric region but the pain stopped. He had also frequently complained about dysuria and dyspepsia. Such problems are hardly connected to heart attack (Lilly, 2012). Despite this, I visited his residence frequently to check how he was doing. Consequently, I noticed about the heart attack quickly and contacted the physician who responded quickly.
When the physician arrived, he started by carrying out a test called electrocardiography on Mr. Brown. I learned that obesity might have contributed to Mr. Boron’s condition. Several years earlier, he had even gone through abdominal plastic surgery. Before suffering from the heart attack, one health profession had already warned him that his excess body weight increased the risk of getting heart attack. He had even been advised to go through bariatric surgery to reduce the risk. Upon checking the history of Mr. Brown, however, the physician noted that he had suffered from necrotizing enterocolitis at the age of four years. Sometimes earlier, he had also suffered from ventricular fibrillation, which is one of the serious cardiac rhythm problems. As Lilly (2012) explained, ventricular fibrillation is characterized by disorganized electrical activities in the heart. Ventricular fibrillation is one of the major causes of cardiac arrests, and the physician noted that it was one of the factors that led Mr. Brown to suffer from heart attack. The Ventricular fibrillation, according to the diagnosis report, was caused by Ventricular tachycardia or tachycardia. Among other forms of treatment, the physician gave Mr. Brown Thrombolytic medicines.
Eventually, Mr. Brown healed but he needed additional care. Thus, he went to live with his relatives. The physician advised him to change his lifestyle and to establish a way of reducing weight in order to minimize chances of suffering from heart attack again in the future. From his experience, I learned about the importance of being proactive in addressing risk factors for heart attack.
References;
- Lilly, L. S. (2012). Pathophysiology of Heart Disease: A Collaborative Project of Medical
- Students and Faculty. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.