Category: A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease

What to get for the heart patient who has (almost) everything

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters  

You could do last-minute Christmas shopping for another scented candle or pottery vase (that just might end up some day on somebody’s yard sale table together). But if you have a woman in your life who has been diagnosed with heart disease, you could choose a truly useful gift this year. Here’s why, in my admittedly biased view, that gift could be my book, A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease. And Santa can even save 30% off the cover price when ordering from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press!) * Continue reading “What to get for the heart patient who has (almost) everything” →

Why patients don’t have admin assistants

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments
                   Moments from the full, rich life of patient partner Lelainia Lloyd *

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Patients can sometimes be sickly people in bed, wearing embarrassingly undignified bum-baring hospital gowns.

Patients can also be experts in the lived experience of their own diagnoses,  who contribute to medical research and education teams as partners in meaningful academic projects.

If you’re surprised by that last description, you’ll be even more surprised by all the things that many patient partners can do in life (besides laying around being sickly).       .        . Continue reading “Why patients don’t have admin assistants” →

ISCHEMIA study: that blockage isn’t a time bomb in your chest

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters  

If you’re a heart patient living with stable angina, the ISCHEMIA clinical trial presented at the 2019 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions is all about you. Cardiologist Dr. John Mandrola described the impact of this study in his Medscape column like this:

“CARDIOLOGY CHANGES TODAY!”      .

But realistically, does one study have the power to actually change the practice of cardiology?      .
 Continue reading “ISCHEMIA study: that blockage isn’t a time bomb in your chest” →

When you ignore pain because you’re used to it…

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters 

I can’t be completely sure, of course, but I’m betting my next squirt of nitro spray that I am a world-class stoic when it comes to putting up with pain. I survived a ruptured appendix and a near-fatal case of peritonitis that kept me hospitalized for a month as a teenager. I popped out two babies the old-fashioned, drug-free way after 20+ hours of labour and Lamaze breathing.  I suffered a broken bone in a bicycle accident while commuting downtown, but still somehow climbed back on that bike in order to show up on time for the meeting I was heading to. 

And I put up with two long weeks of increasingly unbearable symptoms (including being unable to walk more than five steps at a time) after being initially misdiagnosed in mid-heart attack with acid reflux.

So I sat up and paid attention when I happened upon the Despite Pain blog post called The Problem with Being Used to Pain or Illness.  
Continue reading “When you ignore pain because you’re used to it…” →