By Eleanor Boudreau
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-986848.mp3
Memphis, TN – Brenda Taylor had a heart attack at work on a Friday, but she didn't know it, "I thought I was having a severe case of heart burn," Taylor said.
Taylor went to the emergency room on Sunday. Doctors inserted a tiny balloon near her heart, and inflated it, and Taylor stayed in the intensive care unit for days.
On Tuesday the arteries feeding blood to Taylor's heart were still 80 percent clogged and Taylor had to have open heart surgery. She woke up with a lumpy scar on her chest. Even then, she was confused, "My heart surgeon he was drawing all this stuff on the board, you know, showing what he had to do. I still didn't know what it was," Taylor said. "When I went for my two week follow-up, I asked the nurse, I said, Can you explain what did y'all actually do to me?'"
Armed with the little bit of information her nurse gave her, Taylor spent six months at home recovering from the surgery and learning about her disease.
"I just went online," Taylor said.
Here's what she found out--Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S. and Taylor had an increased risk. Black women, like Taylor, are more likely than white women to die of heart disease. Taylor was overweight, she didn't eat healthy and she didn't exercise enough, which also upped her risk; and her dad died of a heart disease, meaning it could run in her genes. All this came as a surprise to Taylor. After doing her homework, she says, she lost 50 lbs. But Taylor remains surprised it took a heart attack to get her there. You see, Taylor, has health insurance and she visits the doctor regularly.
"None of my tests and just my little regular office visits ever came up that there was anything wrong with my heart. But once I found out, once my surgery and everything, I felt like they should have tried to tell me more about what I need to be doing," Taylor said, "And I didn't get that."
It's pretty close to a coin toss whether a patient gets proper care. According to one study in the New England Journal of Medicine 55 percent of patients do and 45 percent don't. Now, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is trying to do something about it. The initiative is called Care About Your Care. Charismatic TV-show host Dr. Oz. is the spokesperson. During a telecast about the effort Oz said, "I think every healthcare providers struggles to find time in the day to have all the conversations that they'd love to have with their patients and that they need to have with them."
Care About Your Care emphasizes a few simple things patients can do. A lot of them things Taylor did after her heart attack ask questions of your doctor, research your condition, and get a copy of your medical records. Care About Your Care also recommends bringing a friend or family member with you to the doctor's office to offer support, take notes, and ask questions.
Beverly Chumbley works as a nurse in Memphis. She says better health and healthcare is primarily the patient's responsibility, "In our culture we've tended to say you can do anything you want to do and take a pill to fix it, or somebody out there can fix it. You know, or it isn't going to make any difference what I eat, or drink, or do with my body. And it does."
With that in mind, Chumbley says, she'd like to see major structural change in the way healthcare is delivered.
"When we begin to pay primary care providers instead of specialists so much money, then we'll get better primary care," Chumbley said. "I mean that is the level at which people change."