Author: Carolyn Thomas

Want the truth about what we eat? Ask our girlfriends…

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

More reports from the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious, my heart sisters. Last year, a group of 45 international nutrition scientists launched a campaign to end the use of one of their most commonly-used research tools: the self-reported food diary.(1)  These scientists now claim that “dietary recall is skewed towards healthier behaviour.”

In plain English, it means this: people participating in nutrition studies lie to researchers about what they actually eat, preferring instead to enter foods into their daily food diary like “kale” and “quinoa” before submitting their self-reports.

And let’s face it, a person who has volunteered for a nutrition study may be too embarrassed to officially record for posterity something like: “I ate half a box of Turtles today just to get them out of the house.”*  (And really, I can’t be the only woman to ever admit to this, can I?)   Continue reading “Want the truth about what we eat? Ask our girlfriends…” →

Invisible Illness Week – seeing what others can’t see

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I showed up bright and early for my 7 a.m. weekly Toastmasters meeting, just as I had been doing every week for 28 years. (I did miss several meetings after being freshly diagnosed with a heart attack in 2008 – the year that, sadly, I lost the coveted Rise and Shine Attendance Award to my archrival, Jim). But because early morning is almost always my best time of day (e.g. minimal cardiac symptoms), if you’d met me for the first time only during that very early weekly meeting, you would not have guessed that I live with something called inoperable coronary microvascular disease (MVD). 

I don’t wear a neck brace or leg cast or any other visible sign that something is wrong. Because this debilitating heart condition is invisible, I often look and sound relatively “normal”.  And if you’re lucky enough to live with healthy privilege, it can be almost impossible to understand what having any invisible chronic illness is like. Continue reading “Invisible Illness Week – seeing what others can’t see” →

Mandatory reporting of diagnostic errors: “Not the right time?”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 15 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m betting my next squirt of nitro spray that the Emergency Department physician who misdiagnosed me with acid reflux and sent me home despite my textbook heart attack symptoms (central chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain down my left arm) did NOT voluntarily report his diagnostic error to his supervisor or to anybody else after I was correctly diagnosed much later by a different Emergency doc in the same hospital. Continue reading “Mandatory reporting of diagnostic errors: “Not the right time?”” →

Most common heart attack signs in men and women

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 32 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Simple. Clear. Easy to understand. Each of these symptoms could be a warning sign of a heart attack. Notice that the unique symptoms listed on the right of this CardioSmart infograpic excerpt are most commonly seen in women.

But there’s more . . .   Continue reading “Most common heart attack signs in men and women” →