By Jillian McKoy, Photo: KATE_SEPT2004/iStock, The Brink, October 31, 2023
Charlene Coyne often thinks back to how her mother, Donna, struggled with severe hypertension for most of her life, battling complications that led to a heart attack and stroke by the time Donna was in her thirties.
She also recalls the dismissive response from a doctor when her mother voiced concerns about the severe side effects—blurry vision, severe headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue—of her blood pressure medications.
“I noticed a physical transformation and could see how toxic the drugs were for her,” says Coyne, now a New York–based biopharmaceutical executive. When Donna mentioned her symptoms to her doctor, he refused to change her treatment plan. “He insisted that he knew what he was doing, and that she just needed to give the medication time to work. But she had already done that.”
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