How to Live Your Best Life With Heart Failure
Heart failure, as the almost 6 million Americans with it know, doesn’t mean “failure.” It doesn’t mean “stopped.”
If you have the condition, it may mean a new lifestyle and a new way of thinking. It means living with a serious, chronic disease.
Heart Failure and Caregiver Burnout
Caregiver burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that may be accompanied by a change in attitude -- from positive and caring to negative and unconcerned. Burnout can occur when caregivers don't get the help they need, or if they try to do more than they are able -- either physically or financially. Caregivers who are "burned out" may experience fatigue, stress, anxiety, and depression. Many caregivers also feel guilty if they spend time on themselves rather than on their...
The important word there: living.
“First of all, heart failure is an unfortunate and inaccurate term,” says Lynne Warner Stevenson, the director of the cardiomyopathy and heart failure program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It usually means that the heart is handicapped, not that it can’t function.”
No one will tell you that heart failure isn’t serious business. It’s certainly a tough pair of words to hear.
“All of the sudden you feel like your life has kind of fallen out from underneath your feet, and that you’re facing this big uncertainty,” Stevenson says. “But it’s not that your life has become uncertain. It’s always been uncertain. We never know if we’re going to make it through the day.
“That doesn’t isolate [you] from all the people around you. Life is uncertain for everybody.”
You can live a productive, fulfilling life with heart failure if you follow a few steps.
1. Don’t become your disease.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in your heart failure and your personal struggle with it. But don’t let it define who you are or what you do with your life.
“Always keeping a positive attitude,” says Allison Durant, “is definitely key.”
Durant, 27, was diagnosed with heart failure and cardiac sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease of the heart, when she was 23. She had a pacemaker implanted in her chest, and she deals with the realities of her condition every day.
She tries to keep a positive attitude, but when that becomes tough, she reaches out to family and friends.
“I would definitely say surrounding yourself with good people makes it a little easier, people that understand kind of what you’re going through,” she says. “And finding a good support group.”
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