by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Here’s my theory: few health crises in life are as frightening as surviving a cardiac event. I developed this theory while I was busy having my own “widow maker“ heart attack in the spring of 2008. Continue reading “What I wish I knew back then: “How heart patients can make peace with an errant organ””
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Two weeks before being hospitalized with what doctors call the “widow maker” heart attack, I was sent away from the Emergency Department in that same hospital with an acid reflux misdiagnosis – despite presenting with textbook heart attack symptoms like central chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain down my left arm.
Before I was sent home that day, I apologized profusely to the Emergency staff for wasting their valuable time. I felt embarrassed because I’d just made a fuss over nothing, because I’d made genuinely sick people wait that morning, and because I was clearly incapable of telling the difference between a serious cardiac crisis and indigestion. Once discharged home, when my symptoms worsened (which, of course, they DID!), there was no way I was going back to that Emergency Department to be further embarrassed – until day after day after day, those symptoms became ultimately unbearable. Continue reading “What I wish I knew back then: “Stop apologizing for needing help!””
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I once heard the late author Dr. Leo Buscaglia tell a conference audience a touching story about how he grew up equating caregiving with love. When he was a little boy, for example, his own mother was cold and distant – except when he was sick. During those times, she would sit at his bedside, stroke his fevered brow, spoon-feed him homemade soup, fuss over each painful twinge, listen carefully to his every wimper, and become the kind of loving mother he rarely knew when he was healthy.
But when he grew up and married, he was shocked by his new wife’s behaviour toward him whenever he got sick. . Continue reading “What I wish I knew back then: “New heart patients must choose their listeners carefully.””
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
The freshly-diagnosed heart patient often staggers from the shock of being hospitalized to the shock of being discharged before we’re feeling even barely ready to return home. As I wrote in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) about my own hospital discharge after surviving a misdiagnosed heart attack:
“I couldn’t wait to go home, to sleep in my own bed, amid familiar surroundings, family and friends. But when I was sent home from the Coronary Care Unit, I was also scared that every twinge I felt surely meant another heart attack. I’d left behind the constant monitoring by professional experts for a home where nobody in my family knew anything about cardiology!”
Heart Sisters 