A Broken Heart

Can we really die of a broken heart?

15 years ago, sitting around a large conference table with hospice nurses, aides, social workers and our medical director I learned about a hospice diagnosis I never knew existed. Takotsubo syndrome. We were having our weekly interdisciplinary team meeting. I learned so much in these meetings, listening to the others on our team and the thoughtful incredibly skilled experience of our medical director.

We were discussing a female patient. A wife and a mother to 12 children. She was in her 90’s and most of the 12 children she and her husband had raised were still local to the area. They were all deeply involved in mom’s care. As was their dad.

He’d been married to their mom for 73 years.

The staff involved had all noticed that although the Mother of this family was our patient, we had all been spending a lot of time with and were expressing a lot of concern, for Dad. We all felt like he was declining in health faster, even, than our patient. But without any known cause.

So I am sitting in this meeting and the medical director is scrolling on his phone while nurses are making report on their patients when he suddenly says, “I found it! Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy! I believe that is what Mr.T is suffering from. He is dying of a broken heart.”

The room fell into an uncharacteristic silence. None of us had ever heard of it.

But it turns out it is a real thing. And it turned out that we were able to admit the husband of our patient onto hospice services so that we were legally able to provide that extra layer of care for our patient’s husband, as well as for her. And it turned out too, that this gentleman did die shortly after his wife, and from no obvious or apparent cause. Except for the one that was obvious and apparent to our intuitive medical director and all the nurses who had entered the home of this family.

So, it is possible to die from a broken heart.

Miriam Webster defines Cardiomyopathy as a “functional or structural abnormality of the cardiac muscle sometimes characterized by complete failure of function”. Also known as, Death. The causes are uncertain but they list many possibilities. And at the very end of the definition they say, “In some patients, the cause is unknown.” Well, maybe not anymore. Maybe, if researched, we’d learn of a loss that was unrecoverable for that particular person. One, that over time, lessened the ability of the heart muscle to stay strong enough to keep pumping.

Most of us, when we have suffered the loss of a beloved, will feel like we want to die. Initially. We will feel like we can’t possibly tolerate the pain of that loss for any longer. And I think many of us then go on to die of some other reason. We continue to put one foot in front of the other over and over again and then one day we laugh. One day, we realize at dinner that the loss we thought we would die from, didn’t interfere with our day once. Because most of us are not 93 and watching the ‘other half’ of ourselves, die.

There is no shame in not dying of a broken heart when your heart has been shattered. When your baby is born not breathing. When your child is torn from your arms by rebels. When your twin dies on your 21st birthday. When unimaginable losses occur throughout our lifetimes, they leave scars. Scars undetectable by machines and blood tests. And over time, the accumulative effect, in my uneducated and humble opinion, can absolutely lead, or at least contribute, to illness, accidents and dementia.

One of the things we talk about in grief work is how it isn’t time alone that helps us heal from the pain of loss. It’s in ‘doing the work’ of processing and honoring the grief that then strengthens our muscles to carry it. Because it doesn’t really ever ‘go way’. It is, from the moment it comes, part of who we are, from that moment forward. So when we have a day that we suddenly realize we haven’t cried once or yelled at a fellow motorist, or wanted to rip someones face off with out teeth, it doesn’t mean the grief is gone or going away. It means we are successfully building up our capacity to carry it without having it weigh us down like it did in the beginning.

But time is a factor in that healing. So, if you are grieving a loss, be patient with yourself. Sometimes, it takes a long time to make friends with it.

As always, thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to read or listen. I love hearing what other peoples experiences are around the things I write about. If you have the time to comment, I read every single one. Also, never hesitate to share these if you know someone who might need to hear it. It’s one of the greatest compliments as a writer on Substack when someone shares my work.

Until next time……

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