The tale of the doctor with the broken heart by Alex Berenson for UnReported Truths – SubStack
Expect to see a lot more sad, puzzled stories like this in the months to come
Dr. Kimberly Becher seems like a very good human being.
I’m not being sarcastic.
Dr. Becher is a family medicine physician in West Virginia who spent the best part of a decade caring for underserved and poor patients in a county that didn’t have a single stoplight, much less a hospital.
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She grew up not far from that county, became the high school valedictorian, got out and came back. Okay, fine, her Twitter feed is somewhat annoyingly woke, but she comes by it honestly.
I know all this about Dr. Becher (except the part about her Twitter) because the New York Times saw fit to write a long profile of her today, entitled “A Rural Doctor Gave Her All. Then Her Heart Broke.”
The article explains how in April 2021, Dr. Becher “suddenly felt as if she were having a heart attack. She left for the emergency room, barely able to see, her blood pressure dangerously high.”
Her tweet from April 24, 2021 offers more details: “250/125 with runs of vtach [ventricular tachycardia], troponins trending up, cath [cardiac catherization], ICU.” No wonder she wound up in intensive care – that blood pressure reading is an immediate cardiovascular emergency all by itself.
Fortunately, Dr. Becher was only 41 at the time of the crisis, and she was in good shape – she had been training for a marathon. She recovered fully, although she has given up on distance running.
But what caused Dr. Becher’s heart problems?
She was given a diagnosis of “Takotsubo’s cardiomyopathy,” sometimes called “broken heart disease.” Essentially, Takotsubo’s is a temporary weakening of the heart’s left ventricle, usually said to be caused by extreme stress. One paper describes it as “mimicking” a heart attack “but with only minimal release of cardiac enzymes.”
