Anyone who has ever experienced the loss of a pet knows how badly it hurts.
When you bring a furry friend into your home, they truly become a part of your family. Particularly when you're the primary caretaker of a dog or cat, they become like your child in many ways. They depend on you for food, shelter, and loving affection.
So when you're unable to protect your pal any longer and need to send them over the rainbow bridge in order to ease their suffering, it's an unbearable kind of grief.
One dog lover now knows this all too well. Back in 2016, Joanie Simpson of Houston was diagnosed with "broken-heart syndrome" after the death of her beloved pup.
Scroll through to read more about this fascinating and unusual story.
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[H/T: Washington Post]
If you've ever experienced a painful loss, you know how badly it can hurt. Saying that your heart is broken may just be an expression for most. But for some, it's literal.
Joanie, a 61-year-old resident of Houston, knew she was taking her beloved dog's death badly.
“I was close to inconsolable,” she told the Washington Post. “I really took it really, really hard.”
Earlier in 2016, her 9-year-old Yorkshire terrier, Meha, died after a long battle with congestive heart failure.
“The kids were grown and out of the house, so she was our little girl,” Joanie explained, noting that Meha was truly like her and her husband's daughter.
Meha's death, tragic in its own right, capped off a long string of stressful events in Joanie's life.
Her son had to have back surgery. Her son-in-law had recently lost his job. They were selling property in a sale that wound up being complicated and taking longer than expected.
Throughout all of this, Meha's quality of life continued to deteriorate. Finally, in May 2016, Joanie decided that it was time to have Meha euthanized.
But when Meha seemed perfectly healthy the day of the appointment, Joanie cancelled, unwilling to part with her beloved pet just yet. Unfortunately, Meha died the very next day, and not in a peaceful manner.
"It was such a horrendous thing to have to witness," Joanie recalled.
After Meha's passing, Joanie awoke early one day with a bad backache and chest pains when she turned over. She rushed to a local emergency room and was quickly airlifted to a Houston hospital.
Doctors assumed the incoming patient was suffering from a heart attack, since Joanie displayed all of those classic symptoms. But the truth was far more devastating — and medically fascinating.
Tests at Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute – Texas Medical Center revealed that Joanie was actually suffering from takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The condition is also known as broken-heart syndrome.
This typically occurs after an emotional event, like the loss of a spouse or child. The condition is named after a type of Japanese octopus trap, because the left ventricle of the "broken" heart takes on a shape resembling a fishing pot.
Joanie's case came to national attention after one of her doctors, Abhishek Maiti, wrote about it in the New England Journal of Medicine.
According to Dr. Maiti, Joanie's was a "very concise, elegant case" of broken-heart syndrome, which research has proven real and occasionally deadly. A 2005 study in the same publication confirmed "that a flood of stress hormones may be able to 'stun' the heart to produce spasms in otherwise healthy people."
The medical journal reported that, at a follow-up one year after Joanie's incident, she had remained asymptomatic — the condition resolved.
Joanie said her diagnosis "made complete sense" because she takes "things more to heart than a lot of people." She is doing fine nowadays, though she hasn't yet found the perfect new dog for her. But that won't stop Joanie from adopting when the right one comes along.
"It is heartbreaking. It is traumatic. It is all of the above," Joanie said. "But you know what? They give so much love and companionship that I’ll do it again. I will continue to have pets. That’s not going to stop me."
After Debbie Reynold's shocking death just a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher's, fans hypothesized that she, too, may have died of broken-heart syndrome.
But in Debbie's case, her son, Todd, confirmed that she had died of a stroke, not a broken heart.
What do you think of Joanie's fascinating story?
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