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 this a “revolution” in med school education?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

After my heart attack, while I was deep in the throes of a truly crippling depression, my doctor referred me to a cognitive behavioural therapist for help. She was an extremely perky person, and used to say things to me like: “I have a great idea! Why don’t you sign up for a really interesting night school course at the college?”  I remember looking back at her and thinking: “You have absolutely no clue.”  If only I’d had the energy, I would have thrown a heavy object right at her head…

I could scarcely motivate myself to even brush my teeth every morning, so how on earth would I manage the registration process for this ‘really interesting course’, never mind actually getting myself out the door to attend night school? 

That’s the kind of suggestion you might make to a perfectly healthy person, and it told me instantly that this therapist had no real comprehension of how debilitating post-heart attack depression can actually be. See also: Healthy Privilege: When You Just Can’t Imagine Being Sick

That’s why I was so pleased to learn about a Canadian university’s innovative new mentorship program that – besides teaching health care students using traditional textbooks, labs and lectures – will link health mentors (adult volunteers actually experiencing chronic illness like heart disease) with teams of students from several health care faculties starting this fall. First year students with the Dalhousie University Health Mentors Program (all from the Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie Medical School and the Faculty of Dentistry) will meet four times a year with their assigned health mentors to ask questions like:

How soon are heart patients safely fit to fly?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

plane-drawing

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Five months after my heart attack, I boarded a plane from the West Coast bound for Rochester, Minnesota.  Considering that I’d suffered two terrifying cardiac events on another long flight just five months earlier made this trip just a wee bit scary for me.

Only the reality that I was headed to the world-famous Mayo Clinic helped to propel me onboard. I told myself that if anything happened to me and my heart during this flight, the board-certified cardiologists at the Mayo Women’s Heart Clinic would know exactly what to do for me. If I survived the flight, that is . . .            .      .  Continue reading “How soon are heart patients safely fit to fly?” →

Having a heart attack? Call 911 – and pack your Tetris game

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

I confess that there was a time when I was ever so slightly addicted to playing the computer puzzle game Tetris.  Like many parents, I discovered it through my children during their early teen years.  Back then, I was known to occasionally “borrow” their little Gameboy and then stay up until 2 a.m. playing “just one more game” while trying to beat my previous best score. But U.K. researchers tell us that time-wasters like Tetris or other so-called “distractor tasks” might very well help to minimize the psychological effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

We know that heart attack survivors have a disturbingly high incidence of undiagnosed PTSD.  Research reported in the British Journal of Health Psychology suggests, for example, that as many as 16% of cardiac survivors actually meet clinical criteria for acute PTSD, and a further 18% report moderate to severe PTSD symptoms.

So if distractor tasks such as playing an obsessively distracting computer puzzle game like Tetris can successfully help to treat PTSD in those affected by combat exposure, could playing Tetris also help heart attack survivors?   Continue reading “Having a heart attack? Call 911 – and pack your Tetris game” →

When the ‘wrong’ family member gets heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

I’ve come to learn that a common reaction to a heart attack is others’ utter shock that this could happen to “YOU, OF ALL PEOPLE!”  Women in particular report reactions like this because, generally speaking, we’re used to being the ones who take care of others, and to being the strong glue that holds our family life and relationships together.

How dare we get sick?

Dr. Wayne Sotile, in his very useful book Heart Illness and Intimacy: How Caring Relationships Aid Recovery, talks about the “family scramble” that can happen when somebody in that family is diagnosed with heart disease.  And few things can heighten the family scramble, he claims, like the “wrong” family member getting sick.  Continue reading “When the ‘wrong’ family member gets heart disease” →