With Gratitude:  Patient Stories

When setting up chairs for Sunday service left him exhausted and gasping for air, Biz knew something was wrong. But he was floored to find out the cause of his chronic fatigue was Stage 4 esophageal cancer. The diagnosis was scary and the outlook was grim. But he wasn’t ready to give up—and neither was his care team at The Miriam Hospital.

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.