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.” .
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Have you ever walked up to a big door and pulled when you should have pushed? Have you done this despite the sign on the door telling you specifically how it works? Have you even pulled repeatedly on the same door when it won’t open? I sure have. . .
Dr. Terry Fairbanks tells this story of some door-watching he did at his local bagel shop while he sat at a table waiting for his wife.
“ I watched person after person pulling on the shop door despite the PUSH sign. But if this were healthcare, we’d put a policy in place, make a policy binder, and put it on the nurses’ shelf!
“But it’s not about policy, it’s about changing the door!” . .
Continue reading “The science of safety – and your local hospital”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
One of the most surprising things about having a heart attack was experiencing cardiac symptoms that appeared, and then went away, and then returned, over and over again for two weeks until I was finally appropriately diagnosed. What was happening to me? In my (mistaken) stereotype of what a heart attack looks like, I had pictured sudden chest-clutching agony that became swiftly worse until you keeled over, unconscious and/or dead.
Every time those come-and-go symptoms eased up, it helped me to believe the Emergency physician who had misdiagnosed my symptoms as acid reflux before sending me home. Continue reading “When heart attack symptoms disappear – and then return”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
This year, a “Best Of” list with a twist. Usually my behind-the-scenes WordPress stats page tracks total views so far for each article I write. That kind of all-time list, however, simply favours the oldest articles, most of which have the advantage of attracting readers over and over, year after year ever since I launched Heart Sisters back in 2009. So this year, here are your Top 10 most-read of the dozens of articles I wrote in 2018: Continue reading “The 2018 Heart Sisters blog posts you liked best”
Heart Sisters 