Janet Cunningham for Patient Testimonials

Speaker: Janet

Janet : Hi, my name is Janet Cunningham and I'm 67 years old. I'm a retired social service worker. I'm married. I have four wonderful adult children and three great grand, three, not great grandchildren, but three wonderful grandchildren. All girls. I've always been very interested in, being very active in my community, doing a lot of support fundraising, helping out people that, in, in need and those are my main interests.

Janet : In 2015, I was starting to feel really winded quite a bit and, I, I was talking to my health care provider at that time and it really took quite a while before I actually had any tests or anything done and then it was finally determined after quite a long period of time that I had, cardiomyopathy, my ef ejection fraction at that time was probably about the mid thirties. But, then, it kind of got up to about the mid forties and everything I was told I'd be fine. I would nothing to worry about. Never had to worry about a heart attack and that my ef was within a normal range and, and life was good. That's what I was told.

Janet : In 2020 I started having a lot of problems. I was very fatigued, very winded. I had a lot of issues mentioning it to my, family doctor at that time. And, that was during COVID. I didn't have any in office visits. I did several phone visits. It was finally, I insisted that I get some more testing done when that happened. I had blood work done actually on June 5th and on June 21st, I hadn't received any follow up from my doctor at that time. And, I actually arrested and I had been in, in pain for about three days prior to arresting and I didn't really do anything about it because for all intents purposes, I was told I'd never have a heart attack and I'd be just fine.

Janet : Best Care really impacted my life a lot. I am having had arrested and being feeling very depressed, feeling very hopeless. I I, I ended up getting involved in Best Care. Probably it changed my life. Definitely for the positive. I started seeing a, an educator by the name of Kevin and he was great. He explained so much to me things I had not known before. Things that had happened to me when I had just the cardiomyopathy prior to having arrested. Having arrested made things a lot worse because I ended up with an ejection fraction of about 23 and that's pretty much where it stayed at. I can't take the total amount of medication as what's needed because it's just, I, it just, my body isn't able to handle it. My blood pressure goes way too low. But again, I don't feel depressed anymore in that because Best Care educators, both Kevin and then I got moved to a different doctor because as I mentioned before, I, I wasn't really happy with my diagnosis prior to being to arresting. And I was fortunate enough to get a wonderful new family doctor and I got to move from Kevin to Zofe. And again, my care has been phenomenal with the Best Care folks. What did I learn about being in Best Care? Is that there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel, there are things that I can do and to make my life better, to make my life more fulfilling. And I, I just don't know where I would have been without the Best Care educators. I, I have to say, I don't even know if I'd still be here because I was very depressed and I, I didn't know what to do. I was sitting around just taking medication and doing what I thought I had to do. And it was through, through my education. I've learned all the wonderful things I could do the foods that I can eat, the exercise that I can do. What is, what is good, what is not good. I, I can't say enough about how much I feel. I've improved. My ef hasn't improved but my mental state certainly has. My depression is gone. I, I, again, look forward to life and I'm actually having a, a good life once again.

Janet : I can't express enough to anyone who's actually viewing this video, how important Best Care is and how how needed this program is. And I wish it would have been around in 2015 when I started this process because I never would have gotten as bad as I did. I think if you're referred by all means, go, I mean, I know when I was referred to go, I thought, oh, do I want to go through this? I was so down and out, I'll tell you it changed my life. It made me have a life and doctors, you know, we have to believe and listen and have faith in our, in our health care providers, but we also have to advocate for ourselves. So if you think that there's something amiss and that there's, you've gone through heart failure or whatever you, you, you need to advocate for yourself as well and say, are there programs out there? Is there someone that can, can spend the time with me and, and better educate me and tell me what I can do to, to improve my life and improve my circumstances. We really have to do that and we really need to, to express it to our doctors. And as far as doctors, you know, you're so busy and you're so overworked and so many patients and not enough doctors, but please just refer, refer us to these wonderful programs. It, it, it will prove probably you too because you won't be seeing us as often and we're going to be getting stronger and we're going to be getting better and, and it's just going to help so much and we're not going to probably have to take the antidepressants and all those wonderful things that go with fuming destitute and everything. When you go through something like this. And as far as the people that fund this, please, please, please continue your funding. It is so important that we have these services and we save lives and we save actually medical dollars in the long run. But more importantly to me personally, it saved my life. I truly believe I'm here today because of the Best Care program that I'm involved in.