'Listen to your body': Advocates in St. John's share their stories for Heart Failure Awareness Week

In honour of Heart Failure Awareness week, some people in St. John's are sharing their experiences with the condition. 

"We have perceived about 14,000 people with heart failure in Newfoundland," said Rodolfo Pike, a nurse practitioner with the Congestive Heart Failure Clinic in St. John's.

Pike said the week is an initiative by a number of national organizations, such as Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada, to bring awareness to the impact that heart failure is having people across the country. This year the awareness week spans May 1 - 7.

"It's a debilitating condition that once diagnosed, there is no cure," Pike said. "But, we do have fabulous treatments that we can use to improve the problems with heart failure."

The theme of this year's awareness week is 'It's not normal to be breathless.'

"Know that what you're experiencing is not normal," Pike said, regarding people who are often short of breath. "There are multiple reasons for what can be causing shortness of breath, but we want to make sure that people who are actually experiencing heart failure are getting rapid assessment and rapid diagnosis."

According to Pike, other symptoms include having to sit upright to breathe at night, unexpected rapid weight gain, and swelling in your ankles, abdomen, or lower back.

"That's not normal," Pike said.

Pike says virtual appointments have been a big help with heart failure patients. His work at the Congestive Heart Failure Clinic is centred around trying to find the right balance of medications for patients. 

"The difficulty with that, sometimes, is trying to get the medications in play at an accelerated rate or at an early rate because of the demands of having a high volume of patients in the clinic." He says the balance of medications should be found within three to four months, but it didn't usually work out that way at in person clinics.

"Oftentimes, we were finding ourselves beyond that because of the constraints in human resources in our clinic."

However, Pike said since the virtual Congestive Heart Failure clinic was implemented, they've been able to treat patients a lot faster and find the right balance of medication by around 10 weeks on average. Pike said the virtual clinic also offers other benefits, such as being able to reach patients further away.

"We're able to access patients that are not in the St. John's metro region, patients who would have traditionally driven four to five hours for repeat visits within our clinic to get those medications."

People from across the province can be seen by the virtual Congestive Heart Failure clinic and Pike said some patients can receive a blood pressure cuff, a weigh scale and an iPad to monitor their own vital signs at home.