Key takeaways:
Christopher Lanphere lost his 2-year-old daughter, Haleigh, in 2016, sending him spiraling downward into a canyon of grief.
When he stopped taking care of himself, he gained weight, got COVID-19, and was diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, and heart problems.
GoodRx coupons save him $200 per month on his seven medications, helping him get his life back on track.
It is frequently said that people die of a broken heart. And the truth is that grief can literally kill you. Until recently, Christopher Lanphere was headed in that direction.
In 2016, Christopher’s beautiful 2-year-old daughter, Haleigh, who was born prematurely and diagnosed with aortic valve stenosis, died from a heart attack. It sent Christopher spiraling downward into a canyon of grief.
“I just stopped taking care of myself,” he says. “When a child dies, you never get over it. You never learn to move on.”
At his best, he managed to sleepwalk through the day.
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“As a man, I try and take care of my wife the best way I can,” he says. “And sometimes, for me, that means holding my emotions in and just trying to move forward as best I can.”
On bad days, he’d close the blackout curtains in his bedroom to block out all light. Sometimes, he’d sit in the dark room for days.
“Deep down inside, you just want to sit in a dark corner and isolate yourself from everybody,” he says. “I isolated myself from the world for a while. I didn't want to speak to anybody.”
Grief took a toll on his body
After the loss of his daughter, Christopher’s health suffered greatly. He weighed nearly 400 lbs, his blood pressure and blood sugar-levels were dangerously high, and he couldn’t sleep. He also caught COVID-19 at one point.
Then, in a quest to determine the source of his daughter’s heart condition, he tracked down his biological family. And he discovered heart problems and high pressure ran in his family.
“My father has had two heart surgeries,” Christopher says. “He takes blood pressure medicine and cholesterol medicine. He has Type 2 diabetes just like I do.”
The 41-year-old corrections officer from Ragland, Alabama, was at the end of his rope, when, in February 2023, his sleep problems prompted him to visit the emergency room.
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“It had been going on for a couple of weeks where I was laying down at night and I’d start coughing up fluids,” Christopher says. “I’d have to take a shower, and I’d feel better. I’d sleep and do it again. I was taking five or six showers a night.”
The ER nurse asked him if he knew he had high blood pressure. “Yes,” he replied. “Do you know how high it is?” she asked.
“It was like 289 over 143,” he says. “The doctor came in and said, ‘How are you alive?’”
In addition to his blood pressure being well over what’s typically considered normal — 120/80 mmHg or lower — Christopher discovered he had fluid on his lungs and heart. And, in one of the chambers of his heart, the wall had thickened by 50% and was blocking oxygen flow. This was in addition to the high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol level that the visit confirmed.
Taking back control of his life, with the help of GoodRx
The emergency room visit was a turning point. Christopher walked out with a list of seven medications he needed to get his life back on track:
Furosemide for edema
Carvedilol for high blood pressure
Amlodipine for hypertension and coronary artery disease
Pravastatin for high cholesterol
Ertugliflozin for diabetes
Lisinopril and prasugrel for his heart
Christopher, who didn’t have health insurance or a primary care doctor, had one question: “How am I going to afford these meds?”
The answer — as it had many times over the previous 7 years — from his wife, Cathy. Just as she’d repeatedly helped pull him from the darkness of his grief, even while fighting her own, she offered a solution to his newest problem: GoodRx coupons. She’d used the coupons before and told him how to show his GoodRx card at the pharmacy.
“So I went to the pharmacist and I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this GoodRx card,’ and she put it in and said, ‘OK, your total is only going to be $94,’” Christopher says.
At that price, he would be saving $200 a month. Christopher could hardly believe it at the time. Eight months later, he feels extremely grateful, as he explains in a TikTok video for GoodRx.
“One of the biggest issues a lot of people in America are facing now is not having insurance and wondering how they are going to afford their medicines,” he says in the video. “A lot of people don’t take their medicines because they can’t afford them, and their conditions get worse.”
Affording his medications gave him hope
Christopher’s medications really make a difference in his quality of life.
“Right now, I feel like my health is really, really good,” he says. “I'm actually able to go outside and walk for a while without having to stop. I can lay down at night and sleep for a good 6, 7, 8 hours.”
It took getting better for him to realize how sick he was, Christopher says.
“I still have high blood pressure, and I still have high blood sugar,” he says. “But now that I’m on medicine, I can tell how bad it was back then. I remember I was sweating like crazy in the summers and didn’t think anything of it. I thought, ‘It’s hot, and I’ll drink some water and be fine.’ No, it was my blood pressure,” he says.
“I'll probably have to take these medications for the rest of my life,” he adds. “I’m OK with that. I'm not going to stop taking medications and end up back in the hospital again. I’m not going to do it.”
Christopher now weighs 268 lbs, exercises consistently, and regularly visits a physician. And he’s come out of the darkness — somewhat.
“I miss my little girl so much,” he says. “I miss her every single day. I know she’s always watching down on me.”
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