Author: Carolyn Thomas

Chest pain while running uphill

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

 Part 3 of a 3-part series about pain

runningMy initial heart attack symptoms struck me right out of the blue.  I was out for a brisk walk early one beautiful Monday morning around 6 a.m. when suddenly, I experienced a pain smack in the centre of my chest. It felt like a cross between crushing heaviness and a severe burning sensation that gradually extended right up my chest into my lower throat. My left arm began to hurt. I also felt like I was going to vomit, and I started sweating far more profusely than my walking pace warranted.

But a strange realization about my heart attack symptoms hit me much later, long after I was hospitalized for what doctors still call the “widowmaker” heart attack.  

This was not the first time in my life I’d felt the chest pain symptoms I experienced on that spring morning.
 Continue reading “Chest pain while running uphill” →

Brain freeze, heart disease and pain self-management

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Part 2 of a 3-part series about pain

Consider the familiar pain we call brain freeze.

That’s the universal experience of feeling a sharp pain in the forehead right between your eyes after you eat or drink something that’s icy cold. But when you feel this pain, it simply means that your hypersensitive nervous system is making a mistake.
 Continue reading “Brain freeze, heart disease and pain self-management” →

It’s Invisible Illness Awareness Week!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

Dearest heart sisters,

If you live with an invisible illness (as almost all heart patients do), this is your week, no matter what your diagnosis.  I encourage you to visit the Invisible Illness Week site, all about those of us living with serious health conditions that nobody else can see. It’s an annual educational campaign about how often illness is utterly invisible to others, how to be sensitive to those living with these challenges, and how to learn from their unique experiences.
Continue reading “It’s Invisible Illness Awareness Week!” →

The freakish nature of cardiac pain

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 15 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Part 1 of a 3-part series about pain

I was thinking about the freakish nature of pain the other day. I think about pain quite a bit, actually, given the frequency with which I now experience the ongoing symptoms of coronary microvascular disease. But when the first alarming warning signs of a heart attack struck out of the blue while I was out for a brisk pre-breakfast walk, the reality was not at all what I would have ever imagined a heart attack to feel like. And because I was clueless, I believed the Emergency Department physician who’d misdiagnosed me with acid reflux and sent me home that same morning.  Continue reading “The freakish nature of cardiac pain” →