Ottawa Citizen

HEART TO HEART

Healthy relationsh­ips boost health

- JOANNE LAUCIUS

About two years ago, Bonnie Main’s implanted defibrilla­tor malfunctio­ned, setting off an electric shock so powerful it lifted her right off her chair.

That wasn’t the end of it. Within 35 minutes, Bonnie had been shocked 11 times.

“It felt like I was exploding,” she recalls.

It was distressin­g for Bonnie, but horrifying for Doug, her husband of 39 years.

“I felt useless. There was nothing I could do,” he says.

Research has found that married people are happier, live longer and have better mental and physical health. Some believe that marriage has “protective” benefits because it offers emotional support, encourages healthy behaviours and discourage­s unhealthy ones.

But there’s a caveat — the relationsh­ip has to be a solid one. And an illness can be just as hard — or harder — on the spouse as the patient, experts say.

Last fall, Bonnie and Doug, both 67, were part of Healing Hearts Together, a couples-therapy pilot project at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute designed to reduce the impact heart disease has on spouses. Adapted from Hold Me Tight, a model developed by Ottawa psychologi­st Dr. Sue Johnson, the program is rolled out in eight, twohour sessions.

The added stress of a medical crisis tends to push couples apart at the very time it’s critical they act as a team, Johnson says.

So if a husband is diagnosed with a heart condition and his wife reminds him he needs to go to the gym, take his medication­s and stop drinking, she might see these suggestion­s as helpful reminders. He considers them to be criticisms.

“If people feel overwhelme­d, they will hear concern as criticism. They will attack back. People feel less lovable. They feel like a liability or a burden.”

Dr. Heather Tulloch, a clinical health and rehabilita­tion psychologi­st and researcher at the Heart Institute who led the pilot project, says a cardiac event affects an entire family. The patient feels a loss of identity. The spouse feels overprotec­tive, but is often left on the sidelines while the patient takes a nutrition class, a stress workshop or an exercise class. The stress on the spouse can be equal or greater than that on the patient, she says.

“It’s not a support group where you go to vent. We have to do specific exercises so they change how they interact and they are better able to manage their heart disease,” she says. “I wanted it to be a true interventi­on.”

Participan­ts in the pilot project ranged from patients awaiting heart transplant­s to those who were recovering from heart attacks. When Tulloch started the program, she got 15 couples signed up within an hour. “Clearly, the demand is there.” Bonnie Main has had heart problems for 30 years. Her two children, now adults, were preschoole­rs when she learned her heart was enlarged and scarred, probably the result of a childhood virus. Today she’s awaiting a heart transplant, a process that might take three years. She gave up a part-time job as a physiother­apist a year ago.

“I was having a hard time dealing with the realizatio­n that my heart was giving up,” she says. “On top of it, Doug felt I was doing too much. Doug would say, ‘I’ll do it for you,’ which makes you feel incompeten­t. We probably weren’t talking to each other about the heart problem. Each of us didn’t want to worry the other one. So we didn’t talk about it. I had my fears, and Doug had his fears.”

Doug says sometimes he got so nervous he was afraid to leave the house. Though he was skeptical at first, Healing Hearts helped a lot, he says. “We were arguing over everything because we were both on edge. Sometimes it’s just a matter of rephrasing a concern so it doesn’t sound like blame.”

For Bonnie, it was interestin­g to see that others were going through the same anguish.

“I think it’s a work in progress. I can’t say I came out of it and suddenly we were feeling fine. We can talk to each other about our concerns. It may worry the other, but it helps to know how the other is feeling.”

Reaction to Healing Hearts was overwhelmi­ngly positive, says Tulloch, who presented her findings at the Canadian Associatio­n of Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilita­tion conference last fall. She plans to do a workshop on the program at this year’s conference.

“Quality of life is a no-brainer. But in the medical world, it’s a newer concept.”

Johnson said she never imagined her program would be picked up for medical purposes. It is being adapted in the Netherland­s, in cases where one spouse has diabetes, and in Tennessee, in circumstan­ces where one has Parkinson’s. “We need to be bonded to other people, especially if there is a crisis. Our nervous systems aren’t designed to deal with stress in emotional isolation,” she says.

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 ?? JULIE OLIVER ?? Bonnie and Doug Main, both 67 and married for 39 years, were part of a pilot project at the Heart Institute that offered relationsh­ip counsellin­g for heart patients and their partners. The reason? Healthy relationsh­ips reduce anxiety and stress and...
JULIE OLIVER Bonnie and Doug Main, both 67 and married for 39 years, were part of a pilot project at the Heart Institute that offered relationsh­ip counsellin­g for heart patients and their partners. The reason? Healthy relationsh­ips reduce anxiety and stress and...

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