Author: Carolyn Thomas

Yentl’s bikini: Dr. Martha Gulati on women’s most deadly heart attacks

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters  

I’d love to believe that if both a man and a woman suffering the same type of serious heart attack showed up together at the same Emergency Department, their treatments and outcomes would be the same. I wish I could believe that, but as cardiologist Dr. Martha Gulati wrote recently(1):

“Despite progress, gaps still persist in how we treat women, and the impact on outcomes. Decades of tracking outcomes continue to show gaps in the treatment of women, and similar findings have been replicated throughout the world.”    .

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This is NOT what a woman’s heart attack looks like

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

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thatguy2.png.This is a man told by the photographer to act like he’s having a heart attack.

 

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

One of the reasons that I knew I wasn’t having a heart attack (even while I was actually having one) was my very inaccurate stereotype of what a woman’s heart attack can look like.

I used to think that heart attacks happen only to men. Old men. Mostly out-of-shape chain smokers and heavy drinkers.  Old, out-of-shape, smoking, drinking men, who one day out on the golf course suddenly clutch their chests in agony and keel over, unconscious. CPR. 911. Golf buddies yelling. Ambulance sirens. Paramedics. Defibrillator paddles. That’s a heart attack, right?

Wrong, my dear heart sisters. That’s NOT a heart attack.  Continue reading “This is NOT what a woman’s heart attack looks like” →

A Mother’s Day without my mother

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

As Christopher Buckley wrote in his memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, when the last of your parents dies, you are an orphan. This is poignantly true if that parent is your mother.

“You 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.”    .  

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Heading home tips following open heart surgery

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters 

Open heart surgery.   Is there any medical procedure in history so surrounded by genuine awe and surreal mystique? Cracking open the sternum to reveal the beating heart beneath, and then somehow trusting a heart-lung machine to temporarily take over the jobs of both the human heart and lungs – now, that’s heroic! But when it comes to explaining just how that happens, few of us might guess that the most compelling and straightforward description comes not from the world of medicine, but from the venerable magazine, Popular Mechanics.
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