A year in review: Top 10 Heart Sisters posts in 2014

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

It’s that time again, when navel-gazing pundits everywhere compile their Best Of or Top 10 lists of movies, political stories, books or bloopers for the year that’s just about to slip away. Same here at Heart Sisters.  So let’s take a nostalgic look backwards today at 2014, at what I like to describe as “cardiac rehab for my brain”. This blog was viewed about 900,000 times in 2014. My WordPress helper monkeys behind the scenes tell me that if this were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 39 days for that many people to see it!  Grand total of Heart Sisters views is over 2 million from readers in 190 countries since I launched this site back in 2009.  

But first, I wish a very Happy New Year to my readers, especially to:

• those of you who choose to share what you read here with your colleagues, families or your health care professionals

• those who follow me on social media (including the 150+ physicians who follow me on Twitter)
  

• my blog subscribers (you can become one too by clicking on Sign Me Up! under Follow Heart Sisters on the right hand side bar here – you’ll get free email notifications of each new post, and I’ll never do anything evil with your email info)

• those who have generously shared your heartfelt, inspiring and so often entertaining personal comments here – I love hearing from you!
  

• all women living with heart disease: you are not alone!

Now here’s that 2014 Top 10 list of the most widely-read Heart Sisters posts:

1. How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Women survivors tell their stories (Topping the list once again this year, this 2009 post – in which I interviewed dozens of heart attack survivors – attracted over three times more daily readers on average than the second most-popular post in 2014)

2. How women can tell if they’re headed for a heart attack (this was also #2 on last year’s Top 10 list; a whopping 95% of us actually suspected that something was very wrong in the months leading up to our heart attacks; this post lists these early warning “prodromal symptoms” as well as urgent signs that a heart attack might be imminent)

3.  Why does your arm hurt during a heart attack? (this 2013 post starts with an incomprehensible response of gobbledygook from a physician to a patient’s question, and ends with my jargon-free translation)

4. Is it a heart attack – or a panic attack?  (We know that over 40% of people with a diagnosed panic disorder seek Emergency Department treatment because of frightening chest pain that is NOT heart-related; this post helps to figure it out)

5.  How soon are heart patients safely fit to fly? (Arguably my most practical post – listing helpful tips to read before you board your next flight. This 2010 article ranked #5 on last year’s Top 10 list, too)

6.  A cardiologist’s advice on how to use this “wonder drug”  (If you carry nitroglycerin for chest pain as many heart patients do, you must read the common-sense words of iconic cardiologist Dr. Bernard Lown)

7.  Chest pain while running uphill (the third of my 2014 3-part series on pain); the other two posts are:

• The freakish nature of cardiac pain
• Brain freeze, heart disease and pain self-management)

8.  Heart attack misdiagnosis in women (Sigh. Why are we still seeing daily examples of women being misdiagnosed in mid-cardiac event compared to our male counterparts?)

9. “Is my bra too tight?” – a poem for heart patients (in which we wonder why physicians do not take this surprisingly common heart attack symptom seriously)

10. When we don’t look as sick as we feel (This post covers a lot about living with a chronic disease: invisible illness, healthy privilege, pasting on that happy face – you name it!)

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Other 2014 stats tidbits from my WordPress helper monkeys about this site:

♥  Most Visitor Traffic in One Day: 8,919 views on December 8, 2014. Over 2,100 of these people were here to read my article on women’s early warning signs of heart attack (see #2 above).

♥  Average Daily Traffic Has Gone Crazy in 2014! One year ago, the average number of views per day in December was about 500. This year, it’s 7,246. I think December 8th (see above) might have skewed those stats somewhat – but even earlier months this year were a bit crazy – e.g. November’s average daily views: 5,423 this year, compared to 561 last November. Whaaaaat…?!?

♥  My visitors came from 190 countries. By far, most of my readers live in the U.S.A. – five times more than in the second place U.K.  Canadians were in third place, followed by Australia, India, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, and Singapore.

♥  How my blog readers found me:  most often by doing internet searches, almost all of them via Google. The words most frequently Googled: “heart attack signs for women” and “arm pain”. In 2014, more people landed here by following links posted on Twitter, beating out Facebook referrals for the second year in a row.

♥  Readers who like to leave comments: Turns out that 6 a.m. is the most active time of day for commenters. The blog posts that drew the most comments from readers this year were Misdiagnosed: Women’s Coronary Microvascular and Spasm Pain, closely followed by “We Are All Patients.” No, You’re Not. (a version of which was also picked up by the British Medical Journal on January 14th this year!)  I learn an awful lot from my commenters (even the exasperated reader who once wrote: “Carolyn, who cares what YOU think?”)

♥  Speaking of guest posts . . . Besides that British Medical Journal post, a number of Heart Sisters articles were picked up and republished as guest posts this past year by other sites. These include:

• Carolyn Thomas: My Experience of Patient Peer Review – also in the British Medical Journal
• The Day I Made Peace with an Errant Organ
• Misdiagnosis: Is it What Doctors Think, or HOW They Think?
  
• When Drugs That Help Turn Into Drugs That Harm
• Why Does Your Arm Hurt During a Heart Attack?
• Heart Sisters: A Patient Voice in the Fight Against Heart Disease in Women
• Why Physicians Must Stop Saying: “We Are All Patients – British Medical Journal
• A Patient Responds to What ‘Experts’ Say About Patient Engagement
• Caring for the Whole Patient
• Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient
• Is Your Doctor Paying Attention?

♥  Heart Sisters in the media! In 2014, I was interviewed for the following media stories:

• Carolyn Thomas: Heart Health Month – CBC Radio “North By Northwest”
• Take Heart – Oak Bay News
• The Heart Attack Gender Gap – “The National” CBC-TV  News
• Midnight Friends: How Wired Patients Are Transforming Chronic Illness – NPR “Commonhealth”, WBUR Boston
• Heart Disease Killing More Women Than Men – Cowichan News Leader
• Nine Tips for Sharing Information With Your Physician – Medivisor
• Heart Disease Isn’t Just For Men, After All – The Globe and Mail
• Video Games and Health – Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Anthology (a biennial book series: starts on page 22)
• The Surprising Way to Stay Safe in Hospital – Consumer Reports (perhaps not surprisingly, in the Don’t Worry About Being a Pest section)

Thanks so much, dear readers, for your support and interest in what I’ve been writing about here, and best wishes to you for good health and many happy adventures in 2015 . . .

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