by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
It was such a pleasure to be invited to do this February interview with award-winning pharmacist and brilliant science communicator Lindsay Dixon – our second Heart Month chat together for her Friendly Pharmacy 5 YouTube channel. .
You can watch our interview here – along with over 100 other videos Lindsay has created, ranging from preventative medicine to patient-centred care or public education topics – each one a true labour of love.
Go pour yourself a coffee, settle back and enjoy our latest chat on women’s heart health.
Looking forward to our next Heart Month chat next year, Lindsay! ❤️
NOTE FROM CAROLYN: Thank you Lindsay for your kind words about both my Heart Sisters blog and my book, A Woman’s Guide to Living With Heart Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press) – available at your neighbourhood library or favourite bookshop, or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon – or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price.
Heart Sisters 
Awesome interview! I so wish I had heard this 5-10 years ago! I’m sure you are making a positive impact – and denial is so strong with women, I believe your efforts with the medical profession is the right way to decrease rates of coronary artery disease and heart attacks in women!!
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Thank you, Lori! You’re so right – denial is very common among women, but it’s distressing to know that it’s also evident among some healthcare professionals, too. The problem of gender bias in medicine is real.
One example of a study that almost blew the top of my head off came from American researchers whose study was published in the journal Women’s Health Issues: they reported that when a FEMALE heart patient is in the back of an ambulance being transported to the hospital with obvious cardiac symptoms, the ambulance is significantly less likely to have its flashing lights and sirens turned on compared to when a MALE heart patient is being transported. There is simply no excuse or explanation possible for this difference – except for this very real systemic problem of implicit bias.
I think we need to reach both women who are minimizing or dismissing their symptoms as well as the medical professionals who are not taking our symptoms seriously.
Take care. . . ❤️
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Carolyn, it was an absolute honour to have you on the channel again and I would be thrilled to make this an annual tradition.
Your continued commitment to education and advocacy for women worldwide is truly inspiring and I have no doubt you have saved many, many lives and improved the lives of those who felt “unseen” in today’s healthcare systems. Truly remarkable.
Thank you for taking the time to share so many crucial insights in this interview. As always, I learned so much from you! 🙏
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Thank you Lindsay for your kind words and for your generosity. I’ve never before encountered a pharmacist with your passion for helping the general public to better understand important healthcare issues through the videos you create. Talk about “expanded scope of practice”! 🙂 As I’ve said before, as a communicator of solid science, you have been raising the bar for all pharmacists!
And YES – let’s make these chats an annual tradition! ❤️
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Thank you so much for this information. I myself had a heart attack in 2022. I was completely gut punched by it. This could not be happening to me, I was to go to work, I’m strong, I just beat melanoma twice, no way is this me.
I will say I did not have the classic symptoms, mine was shortness of breath,sweating unbelievably, and making my bed was the hardest thing I could do. So after 5 dose of nitro & 5 aspirin, I am calling my work saying I may be late. LOL
My boss is telling me unless I’m having a heart attack, I had better be there because they’re counting on me.
As the ambulance is taking me away, I tell her yes that is what I am being told is happening! Fast forward and not even being able to see my biggest life line, my husband of 40 years, I am taken into surgery not knowing if I’m going to make it, me or him, because he can’t come into the hospital – Thank you Covid and the dumb rules that could really help a person who is terrified of what is happening.
Two stents, 5 day alone. I’m released, no one tells you how to deal with the aftermath and at that time I was looking for a women’s support group to talk to – my doc well I’m told you can throw with flying colors, do as I say and you will be fine.
FINE? I’M NOT FINE! MY WHOLE LIFE JUST CHANGED. I NEED OTHERS WHO ARE THE SAME WHO HAVE BEEN THERE, DONE THAT.
Nope one one could tell me that crying at the fact I spilled my coffee was okay, or part of it being afraid to be alone or driving or the type of pain I may have been feeling was part of healing or not.
I start to reach out to read every word I could find on women and heart disease and yes the word failed or failure is NOT HELPFUL TO ANYONE. IT MAKES PEOPLE LIKE ME, LIKE A DEATH SENTENCE – SO STOP WITH IT, OK?
I found out about the heart sisters and yes I’m a member. I also reached out to the Mayo Clinic and the Red Dress Ladies. I was a candidate for the women’s heart clinic training, but sadly had to not go because I had to have a complete knee replacement in 2023.
I’m hoping to reapply for 2024 or 2025. WE AS WOMEN NEED WOMEN TO STAND AND BE NOTCED. WE ARE NOT MEN NOR ARE WE LESS THAN. WE HAVE DIFFERENT SYMPTOMS AND WE ARE DYING BECAUSE ONE ONE IS LISTENING.
I’m alive and I’m thankful to God and medicine to be here.
Thank you!!
Lisa Haacker
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Hello Lisa and thanks for sharing that very dramatic ‘gut punch’ experience with us. I was thinking as I was reading about your hospitalization during COVID that this was so awful for all of us, everywhere, heart patients or not.
My only grandson, for example, was a COVID baby born in 2021 – no hospital visitors of course. I had only what they called a “window” visit, standing in the rain, in the parking lot below the maternity floor, could barely see his tiny face as he was held up to the glass for me. I couldn’t even hold him or even get near him for days until he and his Mummy were discharged home. It was heartbreaking, but that was also the stressful reality for everybody else – desperate times need desperate measures. Those weren’t “dumb” rules at the time – they were of course in place to protect us from a deadly virus.
There are few things in life, as I mentioned to Lindsay Dixon in this interview, that are more anxiety-inducing than having a freakin’ heart attack. A cardiac emergency is hard enough to get through on the best of days, but to have to do it without your “life line” there to hold your hand must have been really frightening.
And knee replacement on top of all that? You must have wondered WHAT ELSE could possibly happen next?!?!
I’m so glad you survived all that – and especially that you’ll be reapplying for Mayo training this year or next. I went to Mayo Clinic five months after my heart attack, and it was truly a life-changing event for me that I will never forget!
Good luck to you, Lisa! ❤️
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Carolyn,
Thanks for this YouTube interview. I just sent a link to one of my nieces who has a factor 5 blood issue.
I just finished Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.
If you haven’t read it I recommend it highly. She is amazing like you!
Thanks for continuing to present information regarding women and heart attacks.
Marty
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Thanks so much Marty – “Eve” is definitely on my list!! I’m in the middle of selling my condo, sorting, packing, donating and getting ready to move, so my reading time has shriveled to almost nothing these days!
But one day soon, right?
Take care – Happy February! ❤️
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