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

DAPT for heart patients (or why you should postpone that pedicure appointment)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  Heart Sisters on Blue Sky

Back in 2006, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared ways to reduce the future risk of blocked coronary arteries in heart patients like me.(1)  In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial (translation: research that can produce reliably high-quality evidence), over 15,000 people from 32 countries were studied.

By the way, it’s worth pointing out a fun fact here:  the study published in the NEJM was a remarkable example of recruitment success. It turns out that up to 85% of all clinical trials in medicine fail to recruit or retain a sufficient sample size of participants, leading to “failure to meet research targets in 4 out of 5 trials” –  even though nearly $1.9 billion is spent on participant recruitment annually.(2) 
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Ups, downs, and going with the flow of diagnosis

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  Heart Sisters on Blue Sky

Karen Salmansohn is the author of many books, including (2nd best title ever!) “HOW TO BE HAPPY, DAMMIT!”  – a book reviewed by one reader as “self-help for people who would never be caught dead doing self-help”).  In her regular  Psychology Today column, while going through a period of time she called her personal “Bucket List From Hell”, Karen made a profound observation that resonated with me – and may also do so with you if you’ve been freshly-diagnosed with heart disease (or any other bad thing you wish was not happening). As Karen wrote:     Continue reading “Ups, downs, and going with the flow of diagnosis” →

Do patients have a “happiness set point?”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

How happy are you? Dr. Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote this in a Fast Company essay:

“People seem to have a happiness set point.(1)  Generally speaking, in the weeks and months after a significant positive or negative life event, you tend to return to roughly the level of happiness you had before that event – that’s the set point. It doesn’t mean that events can’t have a long-term influence on how happy you are – just that the best predictor of how happy you will be several months after either a major positive or negative event is how happy you were before it happened.”
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When patients worry about being judged

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 24 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

I’ve been thinking about the time earlier this year when I (briefly) listed my condo for sale – before changing my mind about leaving this tiny perfect apartment. Basically, inviting prospective buyers into your home boils down to asking strangers to judge you.

In a way, that little real estate experience reminded me of what many patients living with a chronic yet invisible illness like heart disease share with my readers:  feeling judged by others.

Continue reading “When patients worry about being judged” →