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

Do you think you’re a “somebody”?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I'm the little blonde standing up...
I’m the little blonde with the funny haircut

When I was a little girl in the 1950s, my parents were stingy with praise and magnanimous with criticism. To be otherwise would result in a child developing a “swelled head”, which, as all parents knew back then, would be the worst possible thing that could ever happen to any child.

“She really thinks she’s a SOMEBODY!” was a phrase delivered with withering contempt by my mother in describing any person whose sense of self-esteem seemed even remotely healthy.

Continue reading “Do you think you’re a “somebody”?” →

Invisible Illness Week – seeing what others can’t see

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I showed up bright and early for my 7 a.m. weekly Toastmasters meeting, just as I had been doing every week for 28 years. (I did miss several meetings after being freshly diagnosed with a heart attack in 2008 – the year that, sadly, I lost the coveted Rise and Shine Attendance Award to my archrival, Jim). But because early morning is almost always my best time of day (e.g. minimal cardiac symptoms), if you’d met me for the first time only during that very early weekly meeting, you would not have guessed that I live with something called inoperable coronary microvascular disease (MVD). 

I don’t wear a neck brace or leg cast or any other visible sign that something is wrong. Because this debilitating heart condition is invisible, I often look and sound relatively “normal”.  And if you’re lucky enough to live with healthy privilege, it can be almost impossible to understand what having any invisible chronic illness is like. Continue reading “Invisible Illness Week – seeing what others can’t see” →

Exhaustion: the ‘leaky emotion’ of chronic illness

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 18 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Like most of you, I’ve experienced my fair share of garden variety pain over the years (caused, in my case, by things like a ruptured appendix, broken bones, knee surgery, or popping out two babies the old-fashioned way).

But none of those even came close to the chronic pain of refractory angina caused by my current diagnosis of inoperable coronary microvascular disease (MVD).  The chest pain caused by this disorder of the heart’s smallest blood vessels is episodic, intense, frightening and resembles what my “widow maker” heart attack symptoms felt like in 2008. Except this kind of pain happens almost every day.  It’s generally well-managed most days by meds (including my trusty nitro spray) and the non-drug, non-invasive TENS therapy recommended by my cardiologist as well as my pain specialist at our Regional Pain Clinic.  But sometimes, it’s alarming enough that I clutch my chest and wonder:

“Is this something? Is it nothing? Should I call 911? Is today the day I’m having another heart attack?”

As you already know if you live with chronic pain like this, pain can literally change your personality. If it’s chest pain, it can also make you feel anxious and worried in a way that having pain from knee surgery never can. No wonder pain is so utterly exhausting!
 Continue reading “Exhaustion: the ‘leaky emotion’ of chronic illness” →

Oneupmanship: you think YOU have pain?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments

Screen Shot 2015-09-01 at 2.09.31 PM

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Have you ever been in the middle of telling somebody something important to you, only to be interrupted because what you’ve just said has reminded them of their own (far more fascinating!) story that clearly outshines yours? It’s a scene-stealing moment of oneupmanship. Or as author Stephen Covey once lamented:

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Oneupmanship is perhaps most memorably represented in the iconic Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen skit (pictured above) in which the lads sit around and argue about which one of them had endured the worst poverty in childhood. “A house? You were lucky to live in a house! We lived in one room, all 26 of us!”
 Continue reading “Oneupmanship: you think YOU have pain?” →