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

A second opinion from Dr. Google

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

I’ve often suspected that if only the E.R. doctor who misdiagnosed me with indigestion had bothered to just Google my cardiac symptoms (chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain radiating down my left arm), he and Dr. Google would have almost immediately hit upon my correct diagnosis: myocardial infarction, or heart attack. But instead, he pronounced that I was “in the right demographic” for acid reflux. I was sent home that day feeling horribly embarrassed for having made a fuss over nothing but a case of indigestion. As time went by, however, and my debilitating symptoms became truly unbearable, I turned to Dr. Google.

And that’s why I forced myself, despite my embarrassment, to return to the E.R. – but with the pronouncement of that first E.R. doc still ringing in my ears:

“It is NOT your heart!”

Many physicians out there, however, are not happy when their patients consult Dr. Google to research troubling symptoms like mine. Continue reading “A second opinion from Dr. Google” →

“Smile, Though Your Heart is Aching”: is fake smiling unhealthy?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

The classic song called Smile was originally written as an instrumental by the legendary Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times; lyrics were later added, and the song was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1954. Sing along with me now, my heart sisters, as we revisit these famous lines:

“Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and there’ll be tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through
If you’ll just . . . smile.”

It turns out that Nat’s advice about faking smiles, however, may be exactly the wrong thing to do for your own mental health.

This warning is particularly important for those living with a chronic diagnosis like heart disease, who often report feeling obliged to paste on a happy face around other people – even when feeling alarmed about their symptoms.  Continue reading ““Smile, Though Your Heart is Aching”: is fake smiling unhealthy?” →

Coping with your partner’s ICD and heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

I could make out the rounded corners of the implanted device stretching through the thin white skin of Ann’s chest. I was shocked to see such a young, healthy-looking woman among our Heart To Heart survivors’ support group that night (we were vastly outnumbered by old men and their wives).  Ann (not her real name) was just 24 years old; her younger sister had recently died of sudden cardiac arrest due to a terrifying heart condition called Long QT Syndrome – a heart arrhythmia usually affecting otherwise healthy teenagers and young adults – whose first symptom is sudden loss of consciousness and, in far too many cases, death.

Because there is often a family connection, all of the surviving siblings in Ann’s family had to be tested to see if they too shared this deadly diagnosis. Her brother was fine, but Ann tested positive for Long QT, and so was immediately implanted with a life-saving cardiac device called an ICD.  Continue reading “Coping with your partner’s ICD and heart disease” →

How a heart attack turned me into an “information flâneuse”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

Before surviving a heart attack in 2008, I never gave my heart more than a passing thought (except maybe when slogging up that brutal Quadra Street hill with my running group on our way back to the Y).  But after my heart attack and accompanying shock, disbelief, grief and anger, I became just a wee bit obsessed. I threw myself into boning up on women’s symptoms, risk factors, diagnostics, treatments and emerging cardiac research as if I were cramming for some kind of imminent cardiology midterm.

I applied to attend the annual WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium for Women With Heart Disease at Mayo Clinic – and then became the first Canadian ever accepted for this patient advocacy training.  I subscribed to daily cardiology bulletins and heart institutes’ news feeds. I launched this blog, Heart Sisters, and have written 500+ articles here so far. I’ve given presentations about women’s heart health to thousands of people. And I applied for media accreditation so I could interview cardiac researchers attending the 64th annual Canadian Cardiovascular Congress (the first of many I would attend over the years) – where I was shocked to find that only four of the 700 scientific papers presented at this conference were even remotely focused on women’s heart disease.  I find this subject both astonishing and compelling, and am almost insufferably preoccupied with All Things Cardiac.

Just recently, I came across a term that seems to capture the kind of person I’ve become, post-heart attack: an “information flâneur”.   Or, more appropriately, a flâneuse, the female version of this affliction. Continue reading “How a heart attack turned me into an “information flâneuse”” →