Category: Heart disease and mental health issues

– posts here focus on the often overlooked emotional impact of having a cardiac event

“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. . .”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

“You must go on.   I can’t go on.   I’ll go on!”   These words are from Irish author Samuel Beckett’s 1953 novel, The Unnamable”. The late Nobel Prize winner was describing a reaction that many patients may find familiar, especially when facing the shock of a new medical diagnosis on top of your existing condition.

I wrote here about how overwhelmed I felt as a heart patient (“I can’t go on!”)  with distressing new joint pain, and a diagnosis of osteoarthritis. It was too much! I simply couldn’t bear yet another painful diagnosis piled onto my already debilitating daily symptoms of a coronary microvascular disease diagnosis!

But an amazing thing happened. Continue reading ““You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. . .”” →

What this heart patient wants for Christmas is NOT in a gift box. . .”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    @HeartSisters 

My family tells me I’m “impossible” when it comes to picking out a gift for me. I am rarely able to offer them even a single helpful hint. Instead, I plead with Santa every year not to bring me “more stuff”. I don’t want stuff. One only has to visit the average yard sale to witness the inevitable future graveyard of all that stuff. Aside from absolute necessities of life (like groceries or my paper crafting supplies), there are few things I now need or even want.

Well, there are some things that I do need and want, but none come from a store or a gift box. I’ve been focused mainly on one such wish list item these days: feeling safe.  (Are you listening, Santa?) Continue reading “What this heart patient wants for Christmas is NOT in a gift box. . .”” →

The word ‘Kafka-esque’ means nightmarish or strange – like a frightening new diagnosis

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

Have you ever had the same nightmare more than once about the same impossibly unlikely scenario? My own recurring nightmare:  I’m walking into Mrs. Webster’s Grade 13 math class (Ontario high schools went up to Grade 13 in those days). I’m about to write my final math exam – until I suddenly remember that I’ve somehow forgotten to go to math class – ALL YEAR!

That’s the kind of dream described as “Kafka-esque”, named for the writer Franz Kafka. Dr. David Pickus explains that word:

“Kafka-esque is primarily a synonym for ‘nightmarish’ or ‘inexplicably bad’ events – especially if they take the form of a strange interruption of everyday life.”

It also struck me that this“strange interruption of everyday life” is precisely how hearing an “inexplicably bad” medical diagnosis so often feels.   Continue reading “The word ‘Kafka-esque’ means nightmarish or strange – like a frightening new diagnosis” →