Cardiac Cripple

I first heard of this term last week at the cardiac clinic when one of my patient's wife asked me "Doc, do you know what is a cardiac cripple?". (Btw, I hate to be called 'doc').

I was stunned for a while...mainly because I had no idea what she was talking about! Apparently some alec out there who has nothing better to do has coined another 'useful' term..much like 'metrosexual' or 'vital sexual' or even 'ubersexual'. How did this one pass me by?!!!

Thankfully, she saved me from further embarrassment by answering her own question (she was one of those who asks rhetoric questions, you know, the type that ask questions when they already know the answers).

Apparently a 'cardiac cripple' is a person who becomes incapacitated after a cardiac event. Like her husband for instance. He is only 45 but he suffered a heart attack some time last year. He didn't smoke or drink. He was totally without any risk factors but he still had a heart attack (I blame it on his fellow smoking colleagues...murderers!!!!). An angiogram revealed a single vessel disease which was promptly stented without complications.

So, in all sense of the word, he is 'well'. In fact, he did not have any more chest pains since then. But he was so traumatised by the whole thing that he could not return to what he used to do anymore. He is now anxious all the time, wondering when he will have another attack; wondering whether his stented vessel will block up again; he doesn't exercise anymore fearing that it might 'aggravate his heart'; he has zero sex life now (wife very unhappy); he doesn't work; he eats only "healthy food" (read: tasteless bland organic material passed as food); he doesn't do anything except sit at home and.... breathe!

That is a cardiac cripple. A person with no physical deformity but behaved as if he has one, all because he was so traumatised by the cardiac event, he never fully recovered from it. He came face to face with mortality and came away a shell of his former self.

At the church camp, I was 'cornered' by a fellow church member who, in my opinion, is another cardiac cripple. Whenever he sees me, he will ask me how long will his cardiac bypass last! He had a bypass last year and now he is constantly worried when his bypass will give out on him. I told him a bypass can lasts 8 to 10 or even 15 years, depending on many factors. This time he challenged me as some other doctors have told him a bypass can last 20 years! I could strangle that doctor!

I confess I was a little miffed. At best I can only give an intellectual estimate (or guestimate) based on statistics. I can't ever tell him his bypass will last 9 year, 3 months, 5 days and approximately 23.4 seconds! That's God's department, not mine.

There are 2 issues here... one, we doctors have failed to address the psychological impact of a cardiac event on a patient. We just assume that once the blocked vessel is reopened or stented, all is well. We fail to see that some patients become psychological cripples.

The second issue is this... I think it's better to spend the remainder one's life being productive and putting one's life in order (before God and men) than to sit and vegetate and wait for the bypass to give way or for the next heart attack to occur.

Death is a certainty, but the hereafter is a even surer certainty. Are we ready?