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

Survivorship bias: when we focus only on success

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 17 Comments
by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

We were sitting around with friends and family recently over some very nice red wine when our friend Noel asked a question about my weekly Toastmasters meetings, and specifically about whether I thought there are some people who simply never learn to feel comfortable speaking in public, even after Toastmasters training. After a moment’s contemplation, I replied to Noel:

“I can’t really say – because those who actually feel too uncomfortable often just stop attending after a while. But the ones who stay seem pretty comfortable!”

It turns out that what I was describing is essentially what’s known as survivorship bias.*  

Continue reading “Survivorship bias: when we focus only on success” →

Happy 8th Heart-iversary to me!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 45 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 6.34.28 PMEight years ago today, I was hospitalized for a myocardial infarction – or what my doctors referred to as the “widow maker” heart attack.  (Note the gender-biased semantics here, heart sisters: docs don’t call a cardiac event caused by a blocked left anterior descending coronary artery the “widower maker”, do they?) 

I am, frankly, surprised to be here writing this today. Continue reading “Happy 8th Heart-iversary to me!” →

What’s all that sighing, moaning and groaning about?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

blue eye abstractWhen I first saw exhaustion described as the “leaky emotion of chronic illness“, it reminded me of something else. (This happens to me a lot, by the way, a fizzy stream of consciousness that bubbles ideas around my cranium like pinballs until one finally settles in with a *plink*).  The plink this time was that, along with the chest pain, exhaustion and the damned relentlessness that can so often accompany episodes of my refractory angina (or many other symptoms of chronic illness for others), there’s another response I’ve only recently begun to learn about.  

And that’s the sound of soft little moaning, groaning, or sighing noises.

Continue reading “What’s all that sighing, moaning and groaning about?” →

The myth of the heart disease cure

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 26 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

So a bunch of us, all heart disease survivors, were enjoying breakfast together one morning in Rochester, Minnesota. One of the women at our table looked up from her coffee and announced that, yes, even though she had survived a heart attack and subsequent open heart surgery, she didn’t really have heart disease anymore “you know, like the rest of you do.”

I looked at her and replied, in my most charitable tone:

“Honey, nobody gets invited to attend the WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium for Women With Heart Disease here at Mayo Clinic unless they actually have, you know, heart disease.” 

Her attitude of denial, I was to learn later, is not uncommon.
 Continue reading “The myth of the heart disease cure” →