Congenital Heart Disease is a heart disease that is present at or before birth. So in simple terms, you’re born with a bad heart. There are MANY variations of this disease and it is one of the leading birth defects. I had open-heart surgery when I was a few months old and had a pacemaker operation when I was 17.

I recently started making comics about my life with this illness. Featuring my heart, Brady. Brady is short for “Bradycardia” which is the medical term for a very slow heart rate which is one of the things that is wrong with my heart. This series shows all of the weird and strange things he does. Joking about daily frustrations and struggles I have when my heart doesn’t want to do its job.

I started this series to cope with my own situation through humor and art but to also teach people about an illness they might not know about. Thank you for reading!

Mornings with a heart that doesn’t like to do its job goes about as well as you’d expect.

Transmissions

When you have a pacemaker there are things you have to get into the habit of doing. One thing is sending transmissions of your pacemaker to your cardiologist every other month. I am bad at this. Sorry.

Brady has one job. But he’d rather be a chaotic evil potato.

Kind Of Works

A lot of things about me fall into the category of “Kind Of.”
Are you an artist? Kind of. Are you okay? Kind of. Does your heart work? Kind of.

Behavior

Brady’s behavior seems to depend on the situation. Sometimes during my cardiologist appointments, he seems almost healthy.

Other times he is actively trying to implode.

Climbing stairs feels like climbing a mountain when your heart wants to give out halfway up.
Also, the “We got this. We do not get this” is a whole mood for just how art school and college were in general.

Too Young

This was a night during my freshman year of art school. I had a really bad CHD scare and contacted my friend. It was late but she still showed up.

I didn’t know what to do or what I wanted her to do. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone right then. She sat with me for as long as she needed to. It helped. A lot.
This isn’t just a CHD thing. If you want to help someone through something you don’t understand. CHD scares, depression, anxiety, episodes, panic attacks, or whatever else. Simply just being there is often more than enough.

It nice to know you aren’t alone when life gets scary.

Source : https://www.boredpanda.com/author/heartart

About the Author : Hey there! I'm an artist and illustrator with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). I create comics about my life with this disease featuring my heart I call Brady (short for Bradycardia). I hope you enjoy my work! Thanks for stopping by!

The reason why few people are not taking things seriously is because they think COVID 19 can’t affect them.There have been cases of people going to Covid parties in US and in India as well. Such people  are foolishly over confident of their body’s immune system.

The increasing numbers of COVID19 confirmed cases and many, many such cases leading to death has made it more important to set our hygiene and precautionary standards in place.

 We all irrespective of age have to wear mask and "KEEP IT ON" whenever we go out. Now that the lockdown has been lifted and people have started going to their work places, it becomes our responsibility as citizens of this country to behave responsibly. 

 “We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (“asymptomatic”) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (“pre-symptomatic”) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms,” according to the advisory published by the CDC. “This means that the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity — for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing — even if those people are not exhibiting symptoms.

It is becoming increasingly clear that all people should be wearing masks while out in public. Masks are a likely reason why the virus has been better controlled in China, South Korea, Japan, and other countries,” Dr. Subinoy Das, chief medical officer of Tivic Health and the chief executive officer of the U.S. Institute for Advanced Sinus Care and Research, told Healthline.

The recommended N95 masks, are worn by medical professionals who come into close contact with those with COVID-19, are actually respirators. They form a tight seal over the nose and mouth and filter all air coming in or out.

Cloth masks, on the other hand, are much more akin to surgical masks, which are not airtight and are primarily intended to prevent healthcare workers from spreading germs to patients.

Wearing a mask is good for two reasons: It’s going to cut down 95 percent of the breathing that sends the virus up to 6 feet away in a room, and also will reduce fecal/oral transmission by preventing the virus from getting into your nose or mouth” if you touch a contaminated surface and then your face will put a person to risk of Corona virus. So we need to know how to remove our masks, how to preserve and clean them well.

STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY 

You know how there are incidents that greatly impact your life? The incidents where you remember the smallest detail, for years to come and at the same time you don't really remember much of that entire day.

There were three such days/incidents in my life :

First, was when I about 9 years old. I clearly remember the hospital ward, the nurses, the pain from sticking the IV needle in more than twice, the poorly lit room with two beds, one of which was mine. I was about to undergo a procedure for my heart defect which I didn't know much about. I mean, can you expect a 9 year old to know about a normal or in my case, an abnormal human heart? For all I knew, my heart looked like the heart emoji we all use. ❤️

And yet, my 9 year old brain always knew something was not right. You see, for as long as I can remember, my parents have been taking me for a visit to the doctor's even when I wasn't feeling unwell.

I definitely knew the difference between my 'fever-doctor' and the doctor who puts tiny little vacuum pumps on my chest and looks at a long piece of paper with squiggly lines on it. And to say that these visits were frequent would be an understatement. They were every few months, every time my dad was back after working away from home, every time my mom thought I looked too tired to do every day tasks and so on. 

Mom would never take me alone, there was always someone along with us, either my dad when he was home, or my cousin or my uncle. I think she always feared the day my doctor would say, that it's gotten too bad and that they needed to intervene.

That day did eventually come when I was 9 but thankfully, my dad was with us when the doctor was explaining things. I was referred to another doctor; it was like I had level up-ed in a game. This new doctor had a bigger waiting room, more professional looking receptionists, had fancier equipments and a more serious tone to his voice than the previous one.

Doctor visits and my childhood went hand in hand. They took up the entire day, a whole lot of traveling, a lot of waiting and observing people, and kids crying and me wondering why they were crying. I was somehow always easy going for my parents and doctors at these visits.

So, anyway, since I was pretty much used to the people in white coats and their waiting rooms, this new fancier change didn't phase me. I continued to observe the worried adults and kids crying for no reason. It was on this day, that I finally realised what was actually happening. I attribute my limited discovery to my great observation skills and smartness, but mostly just listening to whatever gibberish the doctor was saying and picking up on words and phrases like : 'Bad', 'Severe', 'Difficult in future', 'Operation', 'Heart',  and so on. 9 year olds were smart even then. So it wasn't difficult to put two and two together. Or in this case two and 20 different words and phrases.

Then it all made sense!  I was used to being tired and breathless time and again. Climbing even 2 flights of stairs or running a ridiculously short distance and still needing to catch a breath. This was all too normal for me. But these other kids my age; wow! They ran up and down those stairs like they had super human strength. I always wondered why they could and I couldn't. Oh, and the dizziness and fainting. If there was a degree available for these, I'd be awarded a PhD in my childhood. Maybe it was due to these issues that I grew up to be extremely unathletic. But I wouldn't totally blame it on my health, I do have terrible reflexes naturally. Word of advice : Never throw things at me! Haha.

The second such day was when I was 24 and was graduating. The difference between that day and this day was huge. For starters, I knew that my heart did not look like the heart emoji. The black and red robes, the balloons, the bouquets, and me on a stage in front of my friends, teachers, and families of my fellow graduates.

Me; the girl who thought those squiggly lines were some kind of art and the round piece of a stethoscope was a microphone that the doctor speaks into, was holding an actual microphone herself. She was delivering a commencement speech at her graduation from medical school. After this day, she herself would wear a white coat, look at those artistic lines, and hear heart and breath sounds with the 'microphone'.

Third was after I was back home, with my shiny new degree. My mom said, "I still can't believe it. One day, when you were a baby and had just finished having a seizure, I wondered how I would explain things to you when you grew up. About your condition, about how and why it happened, about what you need to do from now on, things you need to be careful of. How could I answer questions, even I had little knowledge about? That day, a thought crossed my mind for a very brief moment. What if you became a doctor? You'd know everything about it. And I won't have to worry about what to tell you."

My mom, before this day, had never mentioned this. Simply cause it was a fleeting thought all those years back which she happen to remember once she saw my degree. I was shook, in a good way though.

Through it all I have met amazing people, who've pulled through conditions far worse than mine. One may think I was unlucky for being born with a heart defect. But I see it differently. I was lucky to have a defect which has a fairly good recovery rate, I was lucky to have doctors who were amazing at what they did. And most of all, I am lucky to have my parents and my family.

But not everyone is as lucky as I am. Not every child or their parents and families have the means necessary to help their condition or even detect it in time. If only these kids have a chance at a relatively normal life, they can do so much! I know of painters, engineers, and even athletes who all suffer from different heart conditions. The CHD warriors are found in all walks of life.

So, I hope that these kids are also given a chance at life. After all, you never know, they may even grow up to treat you someday. :)

 

About the author

Dr. Manasi Shringarpure.

MD Physician (Russia)

Email : manasi.shringarpure@gmail.com