: Juliet Sullivan
: What Becomes of the Broken-hearted Broken-heart syndrome (aka takotsubo cardiomyopathy), my mother's suicide and other stories
: Hammersmith Health Books
: 9781781612637
: 1
: CHF 11.80
:
: Erkrankungen, Heilverfahren
: English
: 256
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
A practical, sometimes humorous, sometimes devastating, guide to the little-known, poorly understood but increasingly prevalent health problem, broken-heart syndrome, also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy. This is a condition in which the heart muscle becomes suddenly and severely weakened, often as a result of great emotional and/or physical stress, causing the heart's left ventricle (main pumping chamber) to become significantly enlarged, resembling a Japanese octopus trap (a tako-tsubo). Correctly diagnosed and treated, the condition is thought to be fully reversible. Based around her own experience of this syndrome following a close friend's sudden death and her mother's suicide, the Author explains the risks, the signs to look out for, the Dos and Don'ts and the best ways to promote recovery. She includes a selection of other patients' stories that show the diversity of happenings that can lead to a takotsubo event, as well as input from two cardiogists/heart specialistis who share the difficulties of identifying and treating the condition.

Juliet Sullivan is a recent and initially reluctant 'expert' on broken-heart syndrome having suffered a collapse following the death of her mother and its very stressful aftermath. In the past she has been a journalist, having written for, among others, the Mail, She Magazine and her local newspaper and for three years a regular column in the Canadian newspaper The Province entitled Diary of an Immigrant. She balances this with being a real estate agent, Christmas tree seller and wife and mother, living partly in England and partly in Canada. Her other books include her successful The Gallstone-Friendly Diet (also with Hammersmith Health Books), a more general cookery book - The Best of British Cookery - plus All Shook Up, the account of Suzie Derrett's natural battle with cancer, and a children's book about her Instagram-famous cat Benny.

August 2022
Southern England

We are at a music festival. Only England can do music festivals like this: quirky, vibrant, diverse, full of colour and exuberance.* Living in Canada for the last 20 years has robbed us of the music festival scene, and so we soak it up, Husband Lee and I. It is one of the things we miss about living away from our homeland. I saywe but I meanI; Lee doesn’t live his life the way I do, hankering after places or things. He doesn’t have takotsubo syndrome either. Just saying.

We arrive at the festival en masse, a group of friends that includes our grown-up daughter and her soon-to-be-husband, bags stuffed with hidden gin and tonics. We might be middle-aged but we still know how to party on the cheap.

As we dance and drink and laugh and sing, I feel lucky to have a group of friends in two countries. I have managed over the past 20 years to keep my best friends in England, while cultivating a whole new friendship group in Canada. It is one of the things I am most proud of as an expat.

Being an expat has not been easy for me. For those 20 years I have kept one foot planted firmly in both countries, and that has ensured a level of constant homesickness, financial ruin and exhaustion that only an expat, or perhaps a convict, will understand. Or maybe I have just been spectacularly bad at it: never fully committing to living in Canada; hanging on to my English roots; never really letting go, like a mother fiercely clinging to her child well into adulthood. (Oh wait, I do that too. I am the mother who still needs to know where her 35 and 26 year-old ‘children’ are at all times.)

But there is also a level of excitement about it, in an emotionally and financially draining way. The frequent flying across oceans; the relentless emotional goodbyes at airports; the constant change. It’s a jet-set lifestyle, in this case without the glamour or exotic destinations. Mine is the kind of jet-set lifestyle where I am permanently broke, exhausted and in a state of unrest. Yet I thrive on the thrill of it all. I am a dual citizen in every sense.

But in this, the summer of 2022, as I take yet another foray into my ‘other’ life in England, I have no way of knowing that it will be the weekend when my two worlds will collide, and set about the process of breaking my heart.

Lee and I are here for a friend’s wedding. I am also here to indulge the thi