Tracey Conway

This presentation often is a follow-up or breakout session to accompany Tracey Conway's popular Drop Dead Gorgeous! keynote speech. It delves more deeply into the emotional aftermath of a life-changing health event. Depression, both mild and severe, is a common consequence following major heart surgery as is a new perception of what the mending body and spirit will withstand. Though Conway enjoyed an amazingly swift physical recovery, she was surprised to find herself in need of both counseling and drug therapy within a year of her sudden death cardiac arrest. Exploring ways to heal emotional and mental damage is a large part of the chronic patient's path to recovery. In "Healing the Broken Heart," Conway shares her experience as a person now living and thriving with a serious "pre-existing condition" and her methods of coping with a variety of challenges, fears and frustrations. Drawing on her hallmark humor, she addresses the misconceptions of how heart disease does and doesn't affect the way survivors can be fully contributing members of society, adapting to healthy change, facing economic challenges due to an altered medical status and embracing life as fully as possible. In particular, she covers the importance of building a team approach to working with the caregivers one's medical team, and finding ways to make these interactions both productive and personally fulfilling for all concerned. Ideal audiences: physicians, nurses and caregivers related to working with patients with chronic health conditions.