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

Deprescribing: fewer drugs, better health outcomes?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 17 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

We all know about prescribing. It’s what our docs do when they pull out the prescription pad so we can start or keep taking a specific drug for a specific medical reason.

But what about deprescribing?

Basically, deprescribing happens when a health care professional decides to taper or stop recommending one or more prescription drugs for any given patient. The practice is aimed at minimizing what’s known as polypharmacy (that’s when patients are taking multiple medications at the same time) while at the same time improving patient outcomes.

What’s the problem with polypharmacy? Plenty, as it turns out.
 Continue reading “Deprescribing: fewer drugs, better health outcomes?” →

As if fear of dying weren’t bad enough . . .

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 16 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

In the astute words of the late Irish soccer star, George Best:

“People say you have to hit rock bottom, and I can tell you that almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.”
Here at Heart Sisters World Headquarters, we have important news from the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious: feeling terrified by the immediate possibility that you’re dying is “quite common among patients suffering a heart attack”, according to U.K. research published in the European Heart Journal.(1)
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In fact, researchers observed that “although heart attack survival rates have improved tremendously over the last few decades, many patients remain quite frightened during the experience” (an understatement, by the way, that could only have been uttered by somebody who’s never actually experienced a frickety-frackin’ heart attack). 
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But it turns out that the intense distress caused by this fear of dying in mid-heart attack is not only a common emotional response, but is also linked to actual biological changes during the weeks following a cardiac event – changes that are ironically associated with a higher risk of suffering yet another heart attack.

Continue reading “As if fear of dying weren’t bad enough . . .” →

Non-inspirational advice for heart patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I know I’m not the only one who wonders why famous inspirational speakers and writers are so often NOT inspiring.  Call me cynical, but maybe I’ve heard once too often:

  • Follow-your-dreams!
  • Reach-for-the-stars!
  • Eat-more-kale!

These pep talks are typically delivered with varying degrees of cheerleading conviction by speakers who invariably spend considerable time boasting about their own amazing dream-following, star-reaching and kale-eating accomplishments.  Continue reading “Non-inspirational advice for heart patients” →

When babies with congenital heart defects grow up

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 18 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

hands-105455_1280In 2005, it was estimated that for the first time in history, there are now more adults than children living with childhood heart defects. That sounds like good news to me, because it means that due to major advances in medicine over the past few decades, more than 90 per cent of babies born with congenital heart disease are now surviving into adulthood. What it also means, however, is that as these babies grow up, they need continued and careful monitoring as adult heart patients.

One such baby was Aletha, one of my blog readers in South Dakota, now 36 years of age. Her parents, she says, realized soon after she was born that their newborn daughter had a problem. Pediatric cardiologists diagnosed baby Aletha with a heart condition called Bicuspid Aortic Valve Disease (BAVD).  Continue reading “When babies with congenital heart defects grow up” →