In the UK, doctors discovered that a young woman had a very rare heart condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy. Until this diagnosis, those around her just thought she was… very lazy!
- There are several types of cardiomyopathy: dilated, hypertrophic, right ventricular arrhythmogenic and restrictive.
- The main symptoms of cardiomyopathy are: cough, respiratory problems, fatigue, loss of appetite, etc.
“I used to take a lot of naps, and when I was in college I couldn’t even walk up the hill to my classes, explains Charlotte Carney to Le magazine Sun. My heart was beating very fast, I was exhausted and out of breath after five minutes of walking“Charlotte had a reputation for being a lazy girl. Indeed, she needed a lot of sleep… So much, that she even had to sleep in the middle of the day.
Out of breath after five minutes
Until she left to study in 2015, she thought her need for sleep was normal. Once she became a student, this problem got worse… The trigger was that the young girl had more and more difficulty walking because she was out of breath and suffered from chest pain.
Additional tests…
“Some days I was fine, and some days I wasn’t.“, she continues. Over the weeks, the 20-year-old girl could no longer go out to see friends or go to university. She therefore consulted her general practitioner. According to her diagnosis, the Charlotte’s symptoms were linked to the stress of her lessons, but this conclusion did not satisfy the girl’s mother, who insisted that she undergo additional tests.
… who showed heart disease in the young girl
According to the results, the girl had a heart condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy. The cardiomyopathy is a cardiac pathology that comes in different forms that have in common toprevent the heart from pumping blood properly.
The restrictive cardiomyopathy
The so-called restrictive form, from which the young girl suffered, is manifested by the fact that her heart muscle stiffens. This phenomenon prevents the ventricles – or lower chambers – of the heart from relaxing and completely filling with blood between beats. This pathology explains the shortness of breath and heart rhythm disorders that Charlotte had been suffering from for several months…
Saved by a transplant
But once the diagnosis was made, the doctors estimated that her chances of long-term survival were only 20%… But she was saved in 2018 thanks to a heart transplant. “I could breathe againhasa“, she explains. She has since returned to a normal life and has been able to travel with her boyfriend.
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