Most of you throughout your adolescent and adult lives have no doubt observed that hormone fluctuations during a menstrual cycle can affect certain body parts on certain days of that cycle. These fluctuations cause symptoms ranging from bloating to cramps, vivid dreams, fatigue, acne breakouts, food cravings, or irritability. (That word ‘irritability’ is doctor-speak to describe the act of threatening spouses with homicide if they leave that freakin’ toilet seat up one more time…)
For decades, scientists have also observed that women’s risk of heart attack increases after menopause. One theory for this age-related delay (compared to male heart patients, who generally tend to have their heart attacks a decade or so before we do) was the drop in female hormones at menopause, particularly estrogen. That timing seemed to intuitively make sense. Estrogen levels go down, heart attack rates go up. It’s why physicians believed for a long time that hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women could actually prevent heart attacks. (PLEASE NOTE: it doesn’t.*) Continue reading
Non-compliant patients who, for whatever reason, do not follow doctors’ orders are a pain in the
Almost all freshly-diagnosed heart patients are warned not to drive for a specific period of time following hospital discharge, ranging anywhere from 24 hours to several months, depending on the specific cardiac issue. And in the earliest days or weeks, we may have mixed emotions even thinking about getting behind the wheel of a car again.
Despite textbook heart attack symptoms, I was sent home with an acid reflux misdiagnosis from the Emergency Department (in the same hospital where I worked!) My only reaction at the time was to feel embarrassed and apologetic because I’d just made a big fuss over “nothing”. I felt so embarrassed that I even sent my hospital colleagues in Emergency a sheepish little thank you note the following day, apologizing once again for wasting their very valuable time. I felt so embarrassed, in fact, that when my heart attack symptoms continued (of course they did!), I refused to return to Emergency for two horrific weeks.
the comments