With Gratitude:  Patient Stories

It was a typical workday in mid-September for clinical nurse Patty McHugh when she received a “low heart rate” alert on her Fitbit. She was feeling normal, no dizziness or weakness, so Patty continued tending to her patients for a period before mentioning her device’s detection to a colleague. At the colleague’s urging, Patty took an EKG at the clinic, which confirmed her bradycardia.

Anna Corwin had tried nearly everything to alleviate her increasingly debilitating back pain. Once a very active nurse who loved gardening, Anna had begun, over several years, to use a wheelchair to get around. Travelling, shopping, and working in the yard all became problematic. “I had extensive physical therapy and then spinal injections, but they all stopped helping,” she says.

On-and-off for about a month this past summer, Aimee Clark wasn’t feeling well. She experienced nausea, vomiting, and upper abdominal pain. At first, the new mom from Cranston, Rhode Island, thought it might be acid reflux related. She tried medication for that, but it didn’t help. Her condition continued to worsen overtime, eventually landing her in the emergency department at The Miriam.

Joanna Ravello Goods was experiencing what she’d later describe as “a weird feeling” marked by a bit of lightheadedness and the sense that she didn’t feel fully present. But it wasn’t anything severe, so she wasn’t overly concerned at first. But when her condition worsened, she decided to go to the emergency department at The Miriam. She didn’t know at the time, but that decision may have saved her life.