Category: Women and heart attacks

– posts here focus on warning signs and symptoms women experience during a cardiac event

The Grinch’s Guide to Women’s Heart Attacks (with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

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Chest pain can make women WORRY a lot,

Yet when women seek help, some are told they should not.

“Anxiety, maybe – you’re stressed by the season!

“Your tests all look fine!”  No one quite knows the reason.

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It could be that these tests weren’t researched on them.

(And, really – aren’t women small versions of men?)

It could be that Grinch docs think women are lying

Or making up symptoms, without even trying.

Continue reading “The Grinch’s Guide to Women’s Heart Attacks (with apologies to Dr. Seuss)” →

Choose your listeners carefully

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

 by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @Heartsisters

I once heard the late author Dr. Leo Buscaglia tell a conference audience his story about how he grew up equating caregiving with love. When he was a little boy, for example, his own mother seemed cold and distant  – except when he was sick. During those times, she would sit at his bedside, stroke his fevered brow, spoon-feed him homemade soup, fuss over every painful twinge, listen carefully to his every word, and become the kind of loving mother he rarely knew when he was healthy.    . Continue reading “Choose your listeners carefully” →

“A Typical Heart” Film Screening/Panel Discussion September 7th

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters   ♥  August 11, 2019

.UPDATE: This event was  FULL with a WAITLIST. Thanks to all who attended its first public screening in Canada! You can watch this film here.

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“A Typical Heart“  is a short but powerful documentary film about women’s #1 killer. Heart disease, in fact, will kill more women this year than all forms of cancer combined. Yet until very recently, cardiac research on diagnostic tools, drugs and procedures has been done only on (white, middle-aged) men.(1)  Even the lab  mice used in early cardiac research were exclusively male animals.(2 ) No wonder many women still consider heart disease to be a “man’s problem”.

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This remarkable documentary was the brainchild of paramedic and researcher Cristina D’Alessandro of York Region Paramedic Services north of Toronto, who first asked the profoundly important question:
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“If women make up over half our population, why are our heart attack symptoms still called ATYPICAL?”         Continue reading ““A Typical Heart” Film Screening/Panel Discussion September 7th” →

When women are far too busy to seek medical help

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 15 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters 

In the wonderful world of cardiology, we know that “time is muscle”. The faster a person in mid-heart attack can get prompt and effective treatment, the greater the likelihood of saving that heart muscle, and of survival itself. As Yale University researcher Dr. Angelo Alonzo has suggested, the weak link in the chain of events leading to prompt and effective cardiac treatment is often patient delay in seeking care (which I’ve written about lots because I was so good at this myself:  here, here and here, for example).  Ironically, even having “knowledge of symptoms or risk factors” does NOT decrease this pervasively common treatment-seeking delay behaviour.   . Continue reading “When women are far too busy to seek medical help” →