Author: Carolyn Thomas

When drugs that help turn into drugs that harm

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

nutrient-drug-interactions-2129I’ve been thinking an awful lot about drug safety lately, ever since I’ve been camped out at the hospital bedside of a dear friend.  She’s been hospitalized with a severe drug toxicity reaction to a commonly-prescribed medication she’d been newly taking for the past month. And when I say “severe”, I mean you cannot even imagine the horrific symptoms she has suffered day after day after day, week after week, while the pharmaceutical culprit, excruciatingly slowly, clears her system.
 Continue reading “When drugs that help turn into drugs that harm” →

The five questions your doctor is probably not asking you

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

five questionsWhen I spoke at the eHITS2014 Vancouver conference on health and technology recently, I was happy to share with the mostly-physician audience my enthusiasm for a new health care initiative called Flip The Clinic.  Have you heard about it yet?

This Robert Woods Johnson Foundation project asks our health care providers to start thinking seriously “beyond the walls” about the way medicine is practiced during a doctor’s visit. Continue reading “The five questions your doctor is probably not asking you” →

A motherless Mother’s Day

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

Based on a post originally published here on May 13, 2012

This month marks both the occasion of my mother’s birthday (on May 7th, coincidentally the birthday of her first great-grandchild, Everly Rose, born in 2015) and, of course, Mother’s Day – yet another Mother’s Day when I didn’t send my Mom a card and flowers. That’s because she died on February 21st, 2012. Last month, she missed the birthdays of her first child (me) and her first grandchild (my own son, Ben) – but since the cruel diagnosis of vascular dementia invaded her brain cells some time ago, she’d long been unable to keep track of things like family birthdays anymore.

As Christopher Buckley wrote in his memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, when the last of your parents dies, you are an orphan:

“But you also lose the true keeper of your memories, your triumphs, your losses. Your mother is a scrapbook for all your enthusiasms. She is the one who validates and the one who shames, and when she’s gone, you are alone in a terrible way.” Continue reading “A motherless Mother’s Day” →

Is your doctor talking to your other doctors?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

talking-illustration-2f787e24f86ed57d0b8d5d3bb93f5b9320b5af44-s6-c30While I was in my hospital’s Coronary Care Unit recuperating from a heart attack, my longtime family physician knew nothing about what had just happened to her patient of over 32 years. At some point, a hospital report signed by the cardiologist in charge of my care was sent off to her (probably by fax – and by the way, can you name any other profession that still uses the fax machine as a mode of such sensitive, important and personal communication?)  Continue reading “Is your doctor talking to your other doctors?” →