Skip to contents
In This Issue:
“Imagine you love to run so fast and breathe so hard that you feel you can do anything,” Michaela Gagne, a former star high school athlete, said last week to a group of cardiovascular patients at BWH. “Imagine running and realizing you feel dizzy. Your vision clouds, you slow down, and you realize you can barely see ahead. Imagine that you can’t feel your legs, but all you can feel is your heart pounding.”
Gagne’s symptoms of Long QT Syndrome, a disorder that can result in erratic heart rates, became evident during a track meet when she was 17. Last week, she shared her story with more than 25 patients with implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) and their families during a support group at BWH. Gagne, named Miss Massachusetts in 2006, spreads awareness of living with a heart condition and an ICD.
“The device is put in to enable patients to live their lives, not to disable them,” said BWH’s Julie Shea, NP, who started the Longwood Medical Area ICD Support Group in 1993. The group meets four times per year and covers a variety of topics that affect ICD patients. “We try to make the group fun.”
Guest speakers like Gagne, who entered a beauty pageant as a new form of competition after her diagnosis, are inspiring to the group. After her first ICD was implanted, Gagne was able to return to sports, but found that speaking to the pageant judges about heart conditions was empowering. Gagne became a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and Parent Heart Watch while completing her bachelor’s degree from UMass Amherst and master’s from Leslie College.
“There’s a lot of work to be done. We need to spread awareness that heart disease can affect anyone, even kids,” said Gagne.