These days, whenever I tell the story of the hours leading up to my hospitalization for a heart attack last year, I ask others to guess what I would have done had those horrific cardiac symptoms been happening to my daughter (or my next-door neighbour, or even a perfect stranger) during that endless cross-country flight back home to the West Coast. Would I have patted her grim, sweaty face and whispered:
“Just try to hang on, honey. We’ll be home in nine hours…”
No, my Heart Sisters, I would have been screaming bloody murder for the Air Canada crew to get help immediately, even if it meant turning the damn plane around. But since these attacks were happening to me, and not to somebody else, I chose instead the unwise and potentially fatal option of just slinking down in my seat, very still, hour after hour, and trying not to make a fuss.
Dr. Barbara Keddy of Nova Scotia is a woman who probably understands why I and other women would react in this inexplicable fashion when it comes to getting our own needs met during a crisis. The university professor and author of Women and Fibromyalgia: Living with an Invisible Dis-ease has suffered from this chronic and debilitating condition herself for over 40 years. During the process of interviewing others with fibromyalgia while she was writing her book, Dr. Keddy experienced a profound ‘aha’ moment that led her to what she now considers a highly likely explanation of why fibromyalgia occurs primarily in women. (more…)
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