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“Smile, Though Your Heart is Aching”: is fake smiling unhealthy?

5 Apr

by Carolyn Thomas

The classic song called Smile was originally written as an instrumental by the legendary Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times; lyrics were later added, and the song was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1954. Sing along with me now, my heart sisters, as we revisit these famous lines:

“Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and there’ll be tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through
If you’ll just . . . smile.”

It turns out that Nat’s advice about faking smiles, however, may be exactly the wrong thing to do for your own mental health.

This warning is particularly important for those living with a chronic diagnosis like heart disease, who often report feeling obliged to paste on a happy face around other people – even when feeling worried, scared or upset about their symptoms.  (more…)

Coping with your partner’s ICD and heart disease

1 Apr

I could make out the rounded corners of the implanted device stretching through the thin white skin of Ann’s chest. I was shocked to see such a young, healthy-looking woman among our Heart To Heart survivors’ support group that night (we were vastly outnumbered by old men and their wives).  Ann (not her real name) was just 24 years old; her young sister had recently died of sudden cardiac arrest due to a frightening heart condition called Long QT Syndrome - a heart arrhythmia usually affecting otherwise healthy teenagers and young adults – whose first symptom is sudden loss of consciousness and, in far too many cases, death.

Because there is often a family connection, all of the surviving siblings in Ann’s family had to be tested to see if they too shared this deadly diagnosis. Her brother was fine, but Ann tested positive for Long QT, and so was immediately implanted with a life-saving cardiac device called an ICD.  (more…)

How a heart attack turned me into an “information flâneuse”

28 Mar

by Carolyn Thomas

Before surviving a heart attack in 2008, I never gave my heart more than a passing thought (except maybe when slogging up that brutal Quadra Street hill with my running group on our way back to the Y).  But after my heart attack and accompanying shock, disbelief, grief and anger, I became just a wee bit obsessed. I threw myself into boning up on women’s symptoms, risk factors, diagnostics, treatments and emerging cardiac research as if I were cramming for some kind of imminent cardiology midterm.

I applied to attend the annual WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium for Women With Heart Disease at Mayo Clinic – and then became the first Canadian ever accepted. I subscribed to daily cardiology bulletins and physicians’ news feeds. I launched this blog, Heart Sisters, and have written 380+ articles here so far. I’ve given presentations about women’s heart health to thousands of people. And I even applied for media accreditation so I could interview cardiac researchers attending the 64th annual Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver last fall. I find this subject irresistibly compelling, and am almost insufferably preoccupied with All Things Cardiac.

Just recently, I came across a term that seems to capture the kind of person I’ve become, post-heart attack: an “information flâneur”.   Or, more appropriately, a flâneuse, the female version of this affliction. (more…)

Would it kill you to treat your patients with respect?

16 Mar

by Carolyn Thomas

Not since I was a teenager having my wisdom teeth surgically removed with the aid of that luscious nitrous oxide laughing gas have I floated home from a dental appointment feeling so exhilarated. Because yesterday, I took a personal stand against rudeness and disrespect in the delivery of my own health care.

Regular readers here will already know how surviving a heart attack (plus, I suspect, my advancing progress towards Cranky Old Lady Land) have made me increasingly ticked off by health care providers who:

  • treat us as if we are simply a piece of meat on a slab – and worse, an invisible piece of meat on a slab
  • forget that we are far more than just the 10 o’clock procedure in their daytimers
  • disregard the fact that there is an actual real live human being attached to the body part they happen to be working on

My recent mission in life seems to be to put the brakes on this kind of pervasively rude behaviour, one health care provider at a time.   (more…)

Squishing, burning and implanting your heart troubles away

8 Mar

by Carolyn Thomas

Like the eminently quotable cardiologist Dr. John Mandrola once wrote on one of my favourite heart blogs:

“We urge patients to eat less, exercise more, and not to smoke. But when they don’t do these things, we still squish their blockages, burn their rogue electrical circuits, and implant lifesaving devices in their hearts.”

As a heart attack survivor, one of the Big Lessons for me has been that although my doctors can “squish, burn and implant” all they like, their heroic efforts do not address what originally caused this damage to my coronary arteries in the first place.

And we now know that most heart attacks are decades in the making.  I didn’t suffer a myocardial infarction, for example, because I ate a piece of bacon or had a bad day at work.  (more…)

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