by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
An interesting phenomenon that I used to observe in bereaved family members during my years working in hospice palliative care is the range of personal grieving styles, and the resulting conflicts over the “right way” to grieve. Continue reading “Which one’s right? Eight ways that patients and families can view heart disease”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Every morning, I clip it onto my belt, or tuck it into a hip pocket. I very carefully attach its sticky little electrode pads onto the skin just over my heart, tucking their long black wires under my clothing. Lately, I also have to hold the electrodes in place on my skin with surgical tape because they’re starting to lose their stickiness after so much daily wear. I turn on the black box at my waist, and adjust its two knobs to the correct power levels. I feel a prickly little buzz pulsating across my chest.
It’s called Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), and it involves electrical impulses called neuromodulation to treat the chest pain (angina) of Inoperable Coronary Microvascular Disease (MVD) – a disorder of the smallest of the coronary arteries (too small to stent, too small to bypass).
My portable TENS unit is about the size of an average cell phone. You may know the much larger version of this machine if you’ve ever had physiotherapy treatments following a muscle injury. The only wounded muscle it’s working on for me now, however, are those in my heart. Emerging cardiac research is showing that, just as the TENS machine works on improving blood flow, reducing inflammation and speeding up healing for an injured shoulder or knee, it may bring the same benefits to heart patients with MVD like mine.
But I do have a love-hate relationship with my little black box. Continue reading “My love-hate relationship with my little black box”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
After my heart attack, while I was deep in the throes of a truly crippling depression, my doctor referred me to a cognitive behavioural therapist for help. She was an extremely perky person, and used to say things to me like: “I have a great idea! Why don’t you sign up for a really interesting night school course at the college?” I remember looking back at her and thinking: “You have absolutely no clue.” If only I’d had the energy, I would have thrown a heavy object right at her head…
I could scarcely motivate myself to even brush my teeth every morning, so how on earth would I manage the registration process for this ‘really interesting course’, never mind actually getting myself out the door to attend night school?
That’s the kind of suggestion you might make to a perfectly healthy person, and it told me instantly that this therapist had no real comprehension of how debilitating post-heart attack depression can actually be. See also: Healthy Privilege: When You Just Can’t Imagine Being Sick
That’s why I was so pleased to learn about a Canadian university’s innovative new mentorship program that – besides teaching health care students using traditional textbooks, labs and lectures – will link health mentors (adult volunteers actually experiencing chronic illness like heart disease) with teams of students from several health care faculties starting this fall. First year students with the Dalhousie University Health Mentors Program (all from the Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie Medical School and the Faculty of Dentistry) will meet four times a year with their assigned health mentors to ask questions like:
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Five months after my heart attack, I boarded a plane from the West Coast bound for Rochester, Minnesota. Considering that I’d suffered two terrifying cardiac events on another long flight just five months earlier made this trip just a wee bit scary for me.
Only the reality that I was headed to the world-famous Mayo Clinic helped to propel me onboard. I told myself that if anything happened to me and my heart during this flight, the board-certified cardiologists at the Mayo Women’s Heart Clinic would know exactly what to do for me. If I survived the flight, that is . . . . . Continue reading “How soon are heart patients safely fit to fly?”
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