Category: Women and heart attacks

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

Skin in the game: taking women’s cardiac misdiagnosis seriously

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

Our physicians are highly trained experts in providing medical care, but it’s their patients who have “skin in the game”.  This odd phrase is believed to have originated in financial sectors to describe senior investment advisors who demonstrate their confidence in a company by putting their own money (their own “skin”) into the company in order to build investor confidence.  If stock prices fall, they stand to lose – just like their clients will. Advisors who choose not to do this may be every bit as smart, but they have no skin in the game.  Continue reading “Skin in the game: taking women’s cardiac misdiagnosis seriously” →

Dr. Google in the E.R.

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 29 Comments

 by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Once upon a time, whenever the good citizens of Belgium experienced puzzling symptoms (let’s say, twitching eyelids), they would turn to Dr. Google to find out what might be causing the symptoms. But the Belgian government, concerned about false and scary health information online, came up with a public awareness campaign that warned: “Don’t Google It. Check a reliable source!” This also included a referral link to a government health site that could help to correctly answer questions about twitching eyelids and other health issues.

This campaign was what patient activist Dave de Bronkart (aka ePatient Dave) bluntly described at the time as “spectacularly wrong, insulting, misinformed and wrong-headed.” Continue reading “Dr. Google in the E.R.” →

Some book excerpts to tease you…

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

 

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters 

It’s been quite the ride since my book was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2017! When it was launched, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease” became Amazon’s #1 New Release in the Medicine/Public Health category. The book is now in its second printing, and reviews have been truly wonderful – with one notable exception: an Australian reader named Robert who complained in his review that there was “a bit too much emphasis on how women are neglected when it comes to heart disease” – and then added: “Happily for me, my doctors, nurses and physios did everything by the book.”

Thank you Robert, for helping to illustrate the cardiology gender gap so perfectly!

Here are some random excerpts from my book, gathered from each of the 10 chapters.
Continue reading “Some book excerpts to tease you…” →

Is ‘being nice’ hurting women?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters 

Imagine the reaction from Emergency Department staff to the woman I met at my Mayo Clinic training, the one who had been sent home from Emergency three days in a row despite her complaints of increasingly distressing cardiac symptoms. Each time she arrived there, she clearly declared the following to the Emergency physician, who continued to repeatedly dismiss her concerns:

“I don’t care what you say. SOMETHING is wrong with me!”

What a royal pain in the ass, staff may have muttered about her, sotto voce.

On her third visit, the physician recommended anti-anxiety medications. But on the fourth visit, on that fourth day, she was taken directly from the E.R. to the O.R. to undergo emergency coronary bypass surgery. Continue reading “Is ‘being nice’ hurting women?” →