In a recent blog post, Dr. Barbara Keddy quotes my new book in this statement: “Coping with a chronic illness is work” – an understatement coming from somebody like her.
Continue reading “Living with both fibromyalgia and heart disease”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
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” Have you considered writing a book based on your excellent Heart Sisters blog? I would love to explore the possibility with you.”
The date was September 9, 2015, and that’s how the message began that was about to change the next two years of my life. It came from Jacqueline Wehmueller, then Executive Editor at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP), the oldest academic publisher in North America.
These thrilling words led to many e-mail and phone conversations with Jackie, followed by submitting a project backgrounder, a draft 10-chapter table of contents, and a sample chapter to JHUP before we could sign the book contract. Continue reading “A Woman’s Guide to Living With Heart Disease: my blog-turned-book project!”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
It’s time for physicians to stop telling patients that a diagnosis of coronary microvascular disease (MVD) is no big deal. Or alternatively, to accept that the diagnosis is real in the first place. As one of my blog readers learned to her horror, this awareness is not yet universal. When she asked her own physician, for example, if her debilitating cardiac symptoms might be due to coronary microvascular disease, he replied: “I don’t believe in microvascular disease!” – as if they’d been discussing the damned Tooth Fairy.
But here’s how Dr. Stacey Rosen, a cardiologist and spokeswoman for the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women campaign, answered a question about microvascular disease in the New York Times recently:
Q: “I have been diagnosed with microvascular heart disease, which I was told mostly affects women and is not considered serious in and of itself. How long can it exist before it turns into serious heart disease?”
A: “MVD can lead to heart attacks, heart failure and death. It’s serious.” Continue reading “Is coronary microvascular disease serious? Is the Pope Catholic?”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
As part of my Dear Carolyn series of posts featuring my readers’ unique stories about becoming a heart patient, this one involves a plot twist that, sadly, sounds maddeningly familiar. It also involves a remarkable coincidence: a married couple who have their heart attacks eight days apart! Today’s tale focuses on one of my favourite themes in women’s heart health: being misdiagnosed with acid reflux during a heart attack, and it stars my longtime reader, Kathleen: Continue reading “Dear Carolyn: “My husband’s heart attack was treated differently than mine””
Heart Sisters 