Top Notch Senior Help and Heart Disease

Providing senior help to those with heart disease may come in many forms, but one approach to offer senior help is to learn all you can about heart disease. By doing this, you often learn the warning signs of a heart attack and can offer senior help if it is needed.

Growing up, I would hold my breath if the phone rang in the middle of the night because it usually meant a loved one had passed on, or was hospitalized and in need of senior help. My grandmother had heart disease and my parents were the siblings that were most involved in her senior help and would receive those calls. In those days, there was not much done once a heart attack had occurred. Technology and heart disease treatments have advanced immensely since then. With my parent’s senior help, my grandmother lived for many years after her first and many subsequent attacks.

Years after we had lost my grandmother, I remember my first senior help event when I had to call to our local Emergency Medical Technicians as we suspected that my Dad was having a heart attack. He had one of the classic symptoms, mild chest pain and discomfort. EMS arrived, provided excellent senior help, took his vitals, gave him aspirin, started an I.V. and then quickly transported him to our local Emergency Room. They confirmed that he was having a heart attack and admitted him. I still recall the fear of the incident and that I would call my folks’ home when I’d be out and hear an ambulance, just to make sure it wasn’t him. I don’t know if that’s normal, it certainly didn’t provide senior help, but I know we all deal with these situations differently. I eventually took Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) where I learned a great deal about senior help, heart disease and what I could do to help if an attack occurred.

In CPR I learned the warning signs of a heart attack and I began to offer true senior help as I learned more about some of the causes that may play a role in heart attacks such as genetics, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, inactivity and smoking. The irrational fears that I first experienced have long ago been replaced with a healthy respect for the measures that can be taken to prevent heart disease and what to do if one occurs. It has been over 24 years since Dad’s first heart attack and I am still privileged to be offering senior help to him whenever he needs it.