Auricular amputations of confectionery rabbits

by Carolyn Thomas      @HeartSisters

Imagine a bright Easter Sunday, back in the mid-1950s. The sun is shining, church bells are ringing, cherry trees blooming, and my sister Cathy and I are decked out in our brand new pink Easter outfits, including matching coats and bonnets.  We have been invited out to lunch at the home of family  friends after Easter Sunday Mass.

We enjoy a delicious lunch of baked ham, deviled eggs, potato salad and – our favourite! – traditional Easter paska, after which the children are dismissed from the table to play while the parents finish their coffee. And that’s when things suddenly go sideways. . .         .       Continue reading “Auricular amputations of confectionery rabbits”

Auricular amputations in confectionary rabbits (or, do you eat the chocolate bunny ears first?)

by Carolyn Thomas  @HeartSisters   April 21, 2019

Imagine a bright Easter Sunday, back in the mid-1950s. The sun is shining, church bells are ringing, cherry trees abloom, and I and my sister Cathy are decked out in our brand new matching pink Easter outfits. We have been invited out to lunch at the home of our friends, the Moskal family, after Easter Sunday Mass.

We enjoy a delicious lunch of baked ham, deviled eggs, potato salad and – our favourite! – traditional Easter paska, after which the children are dismissed from the table to go and play while our parents finish their coffee. And that’s when things suddenly go sideways. . .  Continue reading “Auricular amputations in confectionary rabbits (or, do you eat the chocolate bunny ears first?)”

Life after heart attack if you’re a Type A

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Shortly after my heart attack, while I was lying around at home on the big red chair wondering when I was ever going to feel like my old self, my real self, my fun self, my crazy-busy self again, I went online to seek help from a cardiac support group I’d just discovered (the WomenHeart Connect online community at Inspire).  All I had to do was type in the question “Does anybody else out there experience  ______?” – and I knew that many of the 40,000+ other women members living with heart disease would have an answer, a handy coping tip or just some informed understanding for me.

What was happening to me? I had turned into a person I no longer recognized. That person I used to be – the one who was the last to leave any party, the one everybody else could count on, the one who thrived on juggling multiple work deadlines with ease – seemed to have disappeared. How could I get her back?  Ongoing cardiac symptoms and an as-yet-undiagnosed coronary microvascular disorder meant an unrecognizable pace that I did not like one bit.

What should I be doing to speed up this annoyingly slow recovery business? I posed these questions to my online group, and among many replies, this one arrived from an anonymous sisterly soul who, like me, had been going through much the same awkward transition. A self-described recovering Type A personality, she wrote me the following:  Continue reading “Life after heart attack if you’re a Type A”

“Refrain from operating a chainsaw after your cardiac procedure”

As I love to keep saying, my Heart Sisters blog readers are the smartest and the funniest and the most resilient women out there – and remember that most of them are living with various levels of heart disease symptoms, all while busy being smart and funny and resilient.
 
One such reader is Jennifer, who also lives with a thyroid condition called Graves Disease. She wrote the comment below in response to my blog post about women’s heart clinics. Her hospital experience with our known cardiology gender gap is maddeningly common (and yet another powerful argument for opening a women’s heart clinic in every hospital).

Continue reading ““Refrain from operating a chainsaw after your cardiac procedure””