Category: Living with heart disease

posts here focus on the “new normal” you’ll discover once you get home from hospital and the reality starts to sink in

My year of living COVIDly

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters   

In Italy, where my sister Bev and her husband Marco live, the government ordered a nationwide lockdown on Monday, March 9th last year. The country’s COVID-19 count there had exploded  from under 10 cases to over 9,000 within weeks. On the same day, we here in Canada recorded our first confirmed death. Three days later, hockey-mad Canadians were stunned when the NHL cancelled the rest of its season.

Suddenly, this was really happening.        .     .   Continue reading “My year of living COVIDly” →

A children’s book about living with an open heart surgery scar

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

When Zayna’s infant daughter Sarah was just five months old, the baby underwent open heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect she’d been born with. “The surgery truly saved her life!” says Zayna. “She went from being tube-fed to becoming a bouncing ball of energy.”

But a few years later, Sarah had an experience with her little friends – one that resulted in a new book for kids who are just like her.    .    .  Continue reading “A children’s book about living with an open heart surgery scar” →

Women’s heart disease: wrong symptoms, wrong words or wrong diagnostic tools?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters   

I walked out of our local hospital’s Emergency Department after having my textbook heart attack symptoms misdiagnosed as acid reflux. Much later, my increasingly debilitating cardiac symptoms were finally correctly diagnosed (same hospital, different Emerg doc). But after my hospital discharge, my pushy family and friends kept asking me about that first visit to Emergency: “Why didn’t you demand to see a cardiologist? Why didn’t you ask for more tests?”

As I was soon to learn, that is so NOT how most health care systems work – especially for female patients.    .    .   Continue reading “Women’s heart disease: wrong symptoms, wrong words or wrong diagnostic tools?” →

Have I been a closet introvert all this time?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 18 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Except for those blissfully naïve months of January and February when we had no clue what was about to hit us, 2020 has seemed like a dumpster fire called All-COVID, All-The-Time. Everything we knew and loved changed in ways few of us could have ever predicted. But I’ve noticed another big change overall – and that’s been in me.

The more I hunkered down inside my little apartment this year, the more I began to like hunkering.     .           .      .
 Continue reading “Have I been a closet introvert all this time?” →

Christmas lights amid the dark of COVID

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters 

Normally, I’m the kind of festive season fan who delays All-Things-Christmas until the week or so just before Christmas Eve. That’s when we start hanging the twinkling lights outdoors, wrapping presents, and cranking up Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.

But it’s 2020 now. And suddenly the season is feeling very, very different.     .      .   Continue reading “Christmas lights amid the dark of COVID” →

Pandemic decisions: Bailey’s, bubbles and bikes

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters   

“We humans are wired to pay attention to urgent threats, and so this global pandemic captures our attention in a way that a distant threat like climate change does not,” as the Harvard Business Review reminds us. And while my own attention was being captured in ruthless fashion this past year, I had to make a lot of decisions, both big and small – based on how COVID-19 was affecting my life.     .          .   Continue reading “Pandemic decisions: Bailey’s, bubbles and bikes” →