Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I'd never had any heart problems that I knew of and I was just out exercising one day.
When I first met Louise, he was having problems
with his heart staying in the right rhythm.
I was coming up the hill and I saw these
white lights and I felt like I was going down. I felt like I was going to die.
Its scary I think to have something go wrong with your heart no matter how old you are.
I think the first thing for me to do was to
get to know Lou. And Find out where he'd been in his life, where he was at that particular
time and where he wanted to go. I didn't have any energy, I had no desire,
I didn't want to do anything. I lost all interest in everything.
Dr. Battle just went out of his way to really help me.
It's one thing to know about the newest treatments in heart care, it's another thing altogether
to know you're patient's well. I think in the modern world of cardiovascular
care we have a strong sense of guidelines and procedures we generally follow that are
recommended for most patients. Those guidelines don't necessarily apply to everyone.
And I think that's where the art of medicine today is probably most important to sort through.
Sometimes you do certain procedures, there's a better payoff I guess for the doctor. But
Dr. Battle was not like that. In fact, he told me, he said you didn't need half the
tests you were given. I have the wonderful benefit of colleagues
that I can consult and we can discuss the various options available and I know and in
Lou's case knew I that I had a tremendous procedural option for him if it came to that.
And that gave him great comfort knowing that if the things we tried didn't work, there
was going to be another ace in the hole that we could play that probably would.
In Louis' case, his arrhythmia
was fairly new. It had not established itself and we tailored a treatment plan that
was designed to get him back in his comfort zone, doing what he wanted to do on a daily basis.
Dr. Battle is patient-focused, he's sincere,
I like his honesty and integrity, that he's straight forward and also I would say just
being a friend, I mean he seems like he's with you and he's just one of you and he's
just a good friend, and he puts you in a relaxed mood. He got a great sense of humor and that's
important when you're dealing with heart, cardiology and that particular discipline.
We could go to a place closer to our home
than where we come from, I mean, we're probably about an hour and a halfway but
UVA is our hospital.