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

The lost art of common courtesy in medicine

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 15 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

So I showed up for a scheduled medical test at the hospital the other day. It was one of those particularly distasteful tests that involve a full day’s prep at home choking down a range of hideous chemical cocktails, consumption of which is designed to induce explosive liquid diarrhea that requires staying very, very close to a toilet all day long. The procedure itself  on the following morning was right up there on the Creepy Disgusting Embarrassing Cringe Scale of medical experiences.

Hospital procedures like this feel invasive, uncomfortable, distressing, and revoltingly undignified for most patients. All the more reason that medical staff who administer such procedures need to start treating us like we’re more than just the nameless, faceless 10 o’clock patient in Bed 8, what I’ve previously described here as “the obstacle between them and their next coffee break, just a piece of meat on a slab – but worse, an invisible piece of meat.”

Call me crazy, but I might even go so far as to insist that patients deserve to be treated with common courtesy, and let’s start with the simple basics of saying something like:

“Hello. My name is _____ and I’ll be doing your ______  today.” Continue reading “The lost art of common courtesy in medicine” →

“Seeking Social Solace”: why aren’t heart patients online?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 17 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

See that microscopically tiny little purple sliver near the top of the pie chart? That’s heart disease – and the sliver represents how many heart patients are going online to engage with others about our shared diagnosis. As you can see, we make up barely 2% of all diagnoses discussed by patients on social media, the second smallest slice of this very big tasty pie.  You might wonder why that is given that, compared to every other disease included in this study’s findings, heart disease is our biggest killer. Continue reading ““Seeking Social Solace”: why aren’t heart patients online?” →

Advice for heart patients too tired to do housework

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

“Always keep several get well cards on the mantle. So if unexpected guests arrive, they will think you’ve been sick and unable to clean.” 

Maxine © 1986  Shoebox Greetings

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Six life lessons from Dan’s cat, Annie

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments
Annie

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

My friend Dan Curtis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, an adult educator, a certified life coach, and all-round lovely person. I first met Dan when he showed up on our hospice palliative care unit many years ago to film part of a documentary he’d been working on for three years, following the end-of-life journey of Robert Coley-Donohue, a man living with ALS (whose wife Barbara had also, tragically,  died of the same condition).

Unfortunately, because I was new at my PR position at the time, I knew nothing of this project – so I tried to sternly hustle Dan and his intrusive camera equipment right out of the building, thus inadvertently threatening to ruin forever an especially poignant scene in his documentary. Despite this, he forgave me my bossy ways and we went on to become friends, and his moving documentary about Robert went on to become a popular National Film Board of Canada film called Bearing Witness: Robert Coley-Donahue, and then Dan went on to become a professional personal historian, one who helps record the life stories of others for posterity.

Dan also has a cat named Annie. She is an endless font of useful life lessons, according to Dan.  I loved his essay on Annie’s tips for good time management so much that I asked his permission to repost it here for those of you who have ever wished there were more hours in the day.

So with a grateful hug aimed in Dan’s direction, here’s what he writes about Annie and her lessons on good time management:  Continue reading “Six life lessons from Dan’s cat, Annie” →