‘I had no idea what to expect the day they confirmed positive for Covid-19’

A leading cardiologist and heart expert has described contracting Covid-19 and said, “I feel like I know less now than I did before this all started.”

Dr. Emer Joyce has written about her experiences as a patient and physician, specifically SARS – CoV – 2 myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle.

A consulting cardiologist at Mater Hospital in Dublin, Dr. Joyce tweeted about the article she wrote for the European Journal of Heart Failure: “The article I wish I had never had to write, about the experience I wish I had never had, in a year many of us wish we didn’t have to live and work … While the condition may be temporary, the experience is forever “.

Titled COVID-19, Myocarditis and the Other Side of the Bed, Dr. Joyce recalls giving a presentation in September 2019 at the Heart Failure Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting held in Philadelphia, USA, without which no one present knew that a new syndrome was looming on the horizon.

Little did I know then that exactly one year later, I myself would still be recovering from SARS-CoV-2 myocarditis. “

“I am grateful now that I had no idea what to expect the day I was confirmed positive for Covid-19; at that point I accepted it as a necessary inevitability in order to move forward with clinical certainty after initial relief from a false negative smear of the previous week it was erased by a refractory daily viremic assault. “

He said he questioned the overlap between coronavirus and myocarditis, adding: “Since my predominantly systemic syndrome began, chest pains of various characteristics and flavors had been daily bedfellows and, in my unlimited experience, I discarded them all. as benign actors.

However, I remember the moment when I accepted the veracity of those underlying lingering thoughts that questioned this assessment.

The pain in this particular moment of clarity was exertional, limiting, central, felt like pressure and was associated with a feeling that if not quite ‘angor animi’ [a patient’s perception that they are dying] it was certainly close. “

He said he had been diagnosed with heart disease a month after his Covid-19 diagnosis, several days after an episode of malignant chest pain, and five weeks after the onset of general viral symptoms.

“As, of course, expected with a condition in his childhood, many known and unknown unknowns remain to be discovered, and despite identifying himself as an ‘expert’ on the myocardium and its vagaries, prejudices and vulnerabilities, and subsequently being held hostage in his hands, I feel like I know less now than before this all started, “he said.

Offering what he said was “a bird’s-eye view of the doctor as a patient, the subspecialist as a subspecialist suffering from a condition,” he wrote that “First, from the patient’s perspective, it’s okay that your doctor doesn’t have all the answers.

Dr. Joyce said that a new understanding of the disease was emerging and that fears still existed about the possible long-term consequences for patients, but added: “Finally, a crucial learning point from this experience for me has been reinforcement of the true privilege associated with my usual position as a clinician. “

You can read Dr. Joyce’s article here