After The Cure
I grew up with a heart condition. From the ages 12 to 17 I spent my time in waiting rooms, emergency rooms, and laying on my bed unable to speak because of the amount of pain I was in. I was the kid in your grade who you never saw, who was constantly missing class because of doctor’s appointments or because I simply didn’t feel well. I was the teenager who was depressed, who didn’t eat, who had anxiety attacks on top of the heart palpitations. Heart palpitations can be a side effect of panic attacks, making my cardiologist skeptical that there was something physically wrong with my heart, and that what I was experiencing wasn’t just puberty, and therefore something I would grow out of. I knew it wasn’t something that would simply go away, but due to lack of proof, I had heart palpitations that made my heart beat over 200 beats a minute for 5 years. But I was very lucky.
