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

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters           .  

When Edward Davies was with the British Medical Journal, he attended the Lown Institute conference in Boston, where he was reminded of some unlikely wisdom from boxer Mike Tyson. In the run up to a big fight, he explained, Iron Mike was being bombarded with media questions about how he intended to deal with his powerful challenger. Did he have a strategy?  What was his plan? The boxer’s response was simple:

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

In boxing terms, as Davies wrote in the BMJ, this is completely literal sound advice, but as a figurative metaphor for life, it’s not bad, either:

“Listening to a patient panel here at the Lown Institute conference, I was reminded that this is a worldview that doctors might do well to remember.”

Most patients diagnosed with a life-altering diagnosis can readily identify with what that metaphorical punch in the mouth feels like.  Continue reading ““Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”” →

EECP therapy – and wearing fun socks

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Happy Feet!“Do small things with great socks!”

So says Sharon Durbin, a 62-year old recently retired RN and heart patient from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who has been undergoing a unique, non-invasive, non-drug and effective way to manage the debilitating symptoms of angina caused by coronary microvascular disease and cyclic spasms.  This photo shows Sharon’s view of her feet during the cardiac treatment known as Enhanced External Counterpulsation, or EECP.*  Sharon’s EECP sessions are held daily, and consist of a series of 35 to 50 one-hour appointments.  As Sharon explained recently in her This Old Heart blog article:    Continue reading “EECP therapy – and wearing fun socks” →

Let’s make our day harder – not easier!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Canadian physician Dr. Mike Evans – known to 3.6 million people as the creator of the video-gone-viral 23 1/2 Hours – has done it again. Here’s his 4-minute take on what he calls our “generational case of sitting disease”.  In a modern world obsessed with making things easier, consider his new movement to start making each day harder for better health – especially important in both preventing and treating cardiovascular disease.  Watch it now – Enjoy . . .

♥

Q:  How have you built in little ways to make your day a bit harder?

See also:

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What heart patients want ICD makers to know

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 48 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

dont-forget-about-me-4225379_1280 One of my Mayo Clinic heart sisters was recently invited to speak at a Patient Advocates Forum during the annual AdvaMed conference in Washington, DC – billed as “the premiere annual conference of the medical technology industry”.  This industry includes companies that manufacture cardiac devices like pacemakers and ICDs (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators).

So she did what all of us lucky ‘Mayo grads’ are easily able to do: she contacted other graduates of the annual WomenHeart Science and Leadership Symposium for Women With Heart Disease at Mayo Clinic. What, she asked us, would patients want her to say to these 1,000+ delegates from device companies (and the physicians who care for heart patients) attending this conference? She wanted other patient perspectives on what it’s like living with a metal device implanted inside your chest, what they worried about, and what could be done better. Here is a sampling of the responses – so listen up, titans of the medical device industry and all those who implant these devices into our bodies:   Continue reading “What heart patients want ICD makers to know” →