by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters ♥ March 24, 2019
A woman in one of my Heart-Smart Women presentation audiences told me about a conversation she overheard in our local Emergency Department, in which the physician said to the (male) patient in the bed next to hers:
“All of your cardiac tests came back ‘normal’, but we’re going to admit you for observation just to make sure it isn’t your heart.”
That story tells us that (unlike your average woman – i.e. me! – with cardiac symptoms alarming enough to propel her to seek emergency care, but unlucky enough to have tests that look “normal”), a man who shows up with both cardiac symptoms and “normal” test results does not need to fight to be believed. Continue reading
I recently had the honour of being invited to speak to a university class of young students learning about chronic illness. (The word “young”, of course, is relative, since almost everybody on earth is now so much younger than I am). These students were absolutely terrific – enthusiastic, smart, full of questions and ideas about healthcare. But about halfway through our 3-hour class together, I began to observe a pattern in the way some of them approached their small group exercise assignment. 
People living with chronic illness often discover that they must adapt to changes in what occupational therapists like to call our 
One of the most surprising things about having a heart attack was experiencing cardiac symptoms that appeared, and then went away, and then returned, over and over again for two weeks until I was finally appropriately diagnosed. What was happening to me? In my (mistaken) stereotype of what a heart attack looks like, I had pictured sudden chest-clutching agony that became swiftly worse until you keeled over, unconscious and/or dead. 
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