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

Patient engagement? How about doctor engagement?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

It’s a stressful time to be a patient these days, what with expectations running high that we should be both empowered and engaged while self-tracking every trackable health indicator possible – and of course retaining an all-important positive mental attitude – in order to change health care forever. 

Whew. I had to go have a wee lie-down just thinking about how big that responsibility may seem on days when we patients are feeling, yes, sick –  as an annoyingly significant number of patients living with a chronic and progressive illness tend to feel on any given day. That’s why we’re sometimes called “patients”.   Continue reading “Patient engagement? How about doctor engagement?” →

What your cardiologist (should have) learned last month

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

After a bunch of top cardiologists got together in San Francisco recently for the annual American College of Cardiology scientific meetings, Debra Sherman and her team did a fine job summing up highlights for Reuters.*  One of their first take-home messages: some cardiologists believe that drug prescribing has gotten out of hand.  Continue reading “What your cardiologist (should have) learned last month” →

Just not listening – or “narrative incompetence”?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

The Radical EarI’ve been reading lately about something called the patient’s narrative in medicine. Although it’s basically defined as patients telling the story of what originally brought them to see the doctor, it’s actually much more.

Doctors, for example, all too often may see “the story” as an unnecessarily lengthy distraction from getting swiftly to diagnosis and treatment.

But as U.K. physician Dr. Jeff Clark describes it, connecting with and understanding the patient requires a doctor to appreciate each person’s unique perspective. In the December 2008 issue of The British Journal of General Practice, he asked other doctors to consider how not listening to a patient’s story can be compared to his colleague’s golf game:  Continue reading “Just not listening – or “narrative incompetence”?” →

It lasts as long as it lasts

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

With deep calm, actor Susan Saint James said this after the tragic plane crash death of her youngest child, Teddy:

“His was a life that lasted 14 years.”

Hearing this, Toni Bernhard, author of the highly-recommended book, How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, tried using Susan’s sentiment to try to make sense of her own losses over a decade of being bedridden with a seriously debilitating illness. For example:  Continue reading “It lasts as long as it lasts” →