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

Is it the flu or the common cold?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

I’m writing this from my deathbed. Well, okay, maybe not quite as close to death as I actually felt yesterday, but I have been really, really ill. After four feverish, sweaty, pain-wracked days in bed, sick as a dog, this morning I dragged myself into a  steamy shower and felt almost human again. For a few minutes, anyway, until I collapsed in an exhausted heap in bed. At first, I was calling this affliction a cold, but it appears what I actually have is the flu (or influenza). Here’s what I’ve been learning about what happens when heart patients face these nasty bugs:  Continue reading “Is it the flu or the common cold?” →

Why “NO” is a complete sentence

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 20 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

With apologies to Nike, I’d like you to consider this new maxim: “Just DON’T do it!”  Don’t say YES to every request, demand, invitation, obligation, favour or opportunity out there.  Oh, you can go ahead and say YES to things you really love (good coffee with friends, a bike ride, an afternoon nap) but for anything that you really don’t absolutely need to do, there’s a useful word for you to contemplate using, and that word is NO!  Continue reading “Why “NO” is a complete sentence” →

Living with the “burden of treatment”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 16 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Endocrinologist Dr. Victor Montori of Mayo Clinic describes two types of patients living with chronic illness who don’t follow their physicians’ advice when it comes to implementing recommended treatments or therapies. The first group may just not want to take the pills, or they want to try natural remedies instead, or they want to get better on their own, or they can’t afford their meds, or they just don’t trust that these recommendations will work for them.

But the second group of patients, Dr. Montori explains, may be working very hard to do everything their doctors have suggested (like taking prescribed meds, monitoring their vital signs, coming to all appointments – not only with doctors but with nurses or dieticians or other health care providers). Doing all that takes so much time and effort – on top of feeling sick a lot, juggling family, work and social life – that it can get to be too much.

So they just stop doing it.

Dr. Montori and his like-minded colleagues call this scenario the “burden of treatment” for patients.  Continue reading “Living with the “burden of treatment”” →

From heart-sick to heart-smart

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

Heart attack survivors often celebrate two birthday milestones during the year: the actual day they were born, and the fateful day they survived that heart attack. When I read Elizabeth’s reflections last month on the occasion of her 4-year “heart-iversary”, I asked if I could share her journey of recovery with you here. 

With Elizabeth’s kind permission, here’s what this 47-year old Virginia mother of two wrote:   Continue reading “From heart-sick to heart-smart” →