The Heart and How it Beats

A few weeks ago LHM ran a workshop for the older members of Little Hearts Matter where they were able to learn more about their hearts and how they work. This would allow young people like me to be able to understand the doctors and nurses.
It was great to see everybody there, there were some old friends and some new faces. I’m not always able to come to the LHM open days and workshops as I live down in Kent and it’s a long way to come. So I was quite excited to be able to come and see everybody. Once we had all arrived we introduced ourselves to everyone and created a web of trust between the group with a ball of bright pink wool.

We then got down to business. Suzie took us through how a normal heart works. In order to understand how ours are different we need to make sure we understand how a healthy heart should be. Then the messy practical came in! There were four ox’s hearts all set up so we could look at how a real heart looks and identify things we talked about such as the valves and the four chambers of the heart.

After we cleared up from the practical we talked about how having half a heart affects us and why it matters, we looked at the surgery that the doctors do to help our hearts do the best job they can. We rounded things off with a game that Jon had invented called 9 square which I never quite got the hang of but it was fun.

After lunch we spoke about how the heart beats and the electrical activity in the heart. We looked at how artificial pacemakers are used to make sure the heart is beating at the right rate as sometimes the body’s natural pacemaker may be damaged due to our heart conditions. A few of us in the group have had to have artificial pacemakers including myself.

We then ended the session with some more 9 square before having tea and a chat with everyone talking about life with a heart condition and issues such as applying for university or certain courses as many of these things require a certain amount of UCAS points or hours in volunteering which we may find difficult to achieve due to our heart conditions.

I felt the workshop has given me more confidence in asking the doctors about my condition. It has also helped me to understand the answers. I recently had a pacemaker check up and my younger sister came along to see what it was all about. When the doctor was explaining the changes she had made to the settings for my pacemaker I felt I was more able to understand and explain to my sister what was going on.