posts here focus on the “new normal” you’ll discover once you get home from hospital and the reality starts to sink in
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
When you get together with your girlfriends, are there any conversation topics that are not open for discussion? Any that are off-limits? Any personal stories that you think are, well, just too personal to talk about to those women closest to you?
No, me neither. Continue reading “When you don’t want to talk about your medical updates”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
Almost exactly one year ago, I started feverishly begging everyone I know to please-please-please ask their own family doctors to take on just one more new patient (ME!) despite every family practice clinic in town having a policy of “Not Accepting Any New Patients” during a doctor shortage.
And my wonderful longtime family doctor had just sent out a “Dear Valued Patient” letter, announcing her upcoming retirement by Christmas time. Worse – her letter said she’d been unable to arrange a replacement physician for her patients.
Continue reading “It’s not what you know, or who you know, but who knows you”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
Asking for – and accepting – help from other people can be a challenge for those of us who generally see ourselves as the helper, not the helpee. I come from a long line of Ukrainian women who are born helpers. My late mother’s reflexive response to neighbourhood news of a new baby or a broken leg, for example, was to turn on the oven and start baking for the occasion. . Continue reading “Why patients resist asking others for help”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
A quotation I like a lot (thank you, Bruce Springsteen!) is this: “You get used to anything. Sooner or later, it becomes your life.” As regular readers already know, I’ve been a heart patient for a long time, ever since surviving a misdiagnosed widow-maker heart attack in 2008 – enough time to really get used to the idea of living with heart disease.
In fact, that’s 17 years of getting used to saying things like “my cardiologist”.
In 2009, I launched this Heart Sisters blog. That’s 16 years of getting used to Sunday morning deadlines and reader comments.
Then in 2017, Johns Hopkins University Press published my book “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease” That’s eight years of getting used to publishers, editors, book reviews – and one unhinged (now former) publicity manager.
But on April 1st, I learned that the lump I’d found on my right breast while showering was a malignant tumor (called invasive ductal carcinoma – the most common form of breast cancer, accounting for 80 per cent of all breast cancer diagnoses).
So far, that’s only 75 days of getting used to being a cancer patient. That makes me a rank amateur. No wonder I feel so utterly overwhelmed. Continue reading “75 days – but who’s counting?”
Heart Sisters 