When a spouse passes away soon after her or his partner has died, it's often said that the person died of a broken heart.
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, there is more to it than a romantic notion. Called tako-tsubo by the Japanese researchers who first diagnosed it, stress-induced cardiomyopathy is a condition that acts and feels very much like a heart attack. According to the Journal, it is also known as broken-heart syndrome, a name given by doctors who observed that it seemed to especially affect patients who had recently lost a spouse or other family member.
The mysterious malady mimics heart attacks, but appears to have little connection with coronary artery disease. Instead, it is typically triggered by acute emotion or physical trauma that releases a surge of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart. The effect is to freeze much of the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber, disrupting its ability to contract and effectively pump blood.
Perhaps there are some bloodless types who have never felt an emotional pang like a blow to the chest, but it's safe to say most of us have. Usually it does not rise to the level of cardiomyopathy, thank heaven, or the landscape would be littered with people who have just been dumped, or, since other forms of stress can bring this on, have just lost their jobs. Hey, bad enough that the Dump Truck oí Love has shown up in the driveway; do we also need the Ambulance of Broken Hearts?
Even brave Ulysses got all heartsick; throughout Homer's Odyssey, his heart was thundering and crying, and when he finally gets home and finds that the neighborhood has gone to hell, what does he say?
"Poor suffering heart! [he cried,] support the pain
Of wounded honour, and thy rage restrain.
Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil,
When the brave partners of thy ten years' toil
Dire Polypheme devour'd; I then was freed
By patient prudence from the death decreed."
Thanks for the translation, Mr. Pope.
Fortunately, like Ulysses (Odysseus to his Greek friends), those who actually do suffer from broken-heart syndrome (and 9 out of 10 are postmenopausal women) usually recover quickly and suffer no tissue damage.
There are times, though, when love has perished that we might wish our hearts would follow suit. Around Valentine's Day, it may feel even worse. We need to remember that while there are an awful lot of paper hearts, cardboard hearts, and chocolate hearts around, the human heart is made of much stronger stuff. Even when it's broken.
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