Less than a year after her daughter’s tragic death, Lisa Curry has been admitted to hospital for “chest pains”. Curry, 59, shared a previously unseen picture of her late daughter Jaimi on her Instagram account on Wednesday morning, revealing that she had spent the past five days in hospital, and hinting that her symptoms were caused by grief.
“I’m in hospital,” she wrote in the caption. “It’s day five after coming in with chest pain – a wide squeezing band around my chest and back. All my tests are good. Everyone is stumped. But you can’t test for heartache.”
While doctors are still doing tests to find out why she’s in pain, the retired Olympic swimmer did undergo surgery due to an irregular heartbeat in 2008, and a second surgery for Myocarditis in 2015.
Over the past 10 months, Curry has shared several posts about how she’s struggling to cope with the death of her daughter, who passed away aged 33 in September 2020 after a health battle.
Curry shared a powerful and heartbreaking message on the latest photo of her daughter, urging everyone to be kind, and sharing a raw and honest account of the trauma Jaimi faced throughout her life.
“For every beautiful photo of our girl, there are 10 sad ones. As I lie here thinking about our Jaimi, I wanted to show you how much she hurt too,” she wrote. “Broken hearted by things that people said to her and did to her. Words and actions hurt people so deep that they store that trauma for such a long time. Some people can get through it … some live with it, some just can’t.
“There are many people, like Jaimi, who are beautiful, soft, fragile, sensitive, and are taken advantage of, their trust misused and abused. There are some really questionable people who take advantage of others who are fragile, who go on to live their lives not having a clue [about] the damage they’ve left.”
Curry also opened up about her own experience with grief, saying that “writing things down” and remembering she’s not alone have gotten her through the dark period of her life. “In the (written) stages of grief, there is shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction and working through, and, acceptance and hope,” she wrote.
“You don’t go through each one and tick it off – they overlap, they come and go constantly. It’s hard but you do start to work through them. I’ve found that writing things down is helping. People reaching out to me, although hard, is also helping… because we’re not alone.
“You never know what will trigger the heartache or the tears… it could be a word, a thought, a song, a photo, a memory, a hug from a stranger… all we need is a hug… and understanding… nothing even needs to be said. I now know that every second person you see is grieving in some way, so always be kind to others. To those grieving, I hope you are okay and that you also can find beauty and love in the sadness. Be not burdened with times of sorrow. I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.”
Curry finished her heartbreaking message by urging everyone to take chest pain seriously, writing, “If you feel any sort of chest pain, call 000.”