Author: Carolyn Thomas

The delayed ‘Trauma Drama’ of heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 61 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Summer Ash is a self-professed space cadet. She’s an astrophysicist at Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy in New York City, where she serves as the Director of Outreach.* Five years ago, she underwent open heart surgery after she was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm (that’s when the tissue of the aorta balloons out dangerously). This condition was likely linked to a congenital heart defect Summer was born with called a bicuspid aortic valve. About 99% of people, as she explains, are born with a normal tricuspid aortic valve (meaning three leaflets in the valve), but she was one of the 1% born with only two. With her kind permission, I’m running her story here as it was originally published on her blog, Defective Heart Girl Problems.
 Continue reading “The delayed ‘Trauma Drama’ of heart disease” →

Pain vs. suffering: why they’re not the same for patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 41 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

dont-forget-about-me-4225379_1280I’ve written a lot (here, here, and here, for example) about cardiac pain, because I live with cardiac pain called refractory angina due to a pesky post-heart attack diagnosis of coronary microvascular disease. This pain varies, but it hits almost every day, sometimes several episodes per day, and it can feel very much like the symptoms I experienced while busy surviving what doctors call the widow maker heart attack in 2008.

But there’s pain, and then there’s suffering. The two are not the same.

I spent many years working in the field of hospice palliative care, where we all learned the legendary Dame Cicely Saunders‘ definition of what she called “total pain”.(1)  This is the suffering that encompasses ALL of a person’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles. Although addressing total pain is an accepted component of providing good end-of-life care for the dying, the concept seems to be often ignored in cardiac care for the living. Continue reading “Pain vs. suffering: why they’re not the same for patients” →

If you’re clueless and you know it . . .

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

I am clueless about many things. As in the definition: “Lacking understanding or knowledge.” As in the sentence: “I have no clue!” As in the 20+ years I spent living with a research scientist and enduring mind-numbingly torturous dinner party conversations about zinc and copper sediment in the Fraser River estuary.

That kind of clueless.
 Continue reading “If you’re clueless and you know it . . .” →

A plea for the return of the classic bed jacket for patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 36 Comments

Hospital patients make an immediate trade that none of us want to make. The non-negotiated trade goes like this: We’ll take away (or, in some cases, cut off) your own nice clothes, toss them in this plastic sack, and in exchange, we’ll let you wear this shapeless, backless hospital gown and some goofy-looking booties while you’re here.

This is a trade designed for hospital workers, not for patients. But herein I launch my one-woman campaign to consider a revisit to the timeless yet under-appreciated garment called the bed jacket in order to combat the hideousness of those much-hated hospital gowns. Continue reading “A plea for the return of the classic bed jacket for patients” →