Category: Women and heart attacks

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

Dear Carolyn: “My husband’s heart attack was treated differently than mine”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 20 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

As part of my Dear Carolyn series of posts featuring my readers’ unique stories about becoming a heart patient, this one involves a plot twist that, sadly, sounds maddeningly familiar.  It also involves a remarkable coincidence: a married couple who have their heart attacks eight days apart! Today’s tale focuses on one of my favourite themes in women’s heart health: being misdiagnosed with acid reflux during a heart attack, and it stars my longtime reader, Kathleen: Continue reading “Dear Carolyn: “My husband’s heart attack was treated differently than mine”” →

Informed consent: more than just a patient’s signature

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 18 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

The cardiologist was called to the ER, and told me that he could tell by my T-waves and other diagnostic test results that I had “significant heart disease.” From that moment on, I could see his lips moving. I could hear sounds coming out of his mouth. I think I also may have signed something before I was urgently moved upstairs to have what turned out to be a blocked left anterior descending coronary artery unblocked. I was so stunned and overwhelmed, however, that I simply could not comprehend anything that was happening around me once I realized I was in fact having a heart attack. He may have been speaking Swahili. . .

Yet I’m now pretty sure that the fact I signed a piece of paper somehow meant that I had participated in the informed consent process required of hospital patients who are about to receive treatment.

Does informed consent actually mean that it’s informed at all?  Continue reading “Informed consent: more than just a patient’s signature” →

Women’s early warning signs of a heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

When Dr. Jean McSweeney from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences interviewed hundreds of heart attack survivors, she discovered something surprising: 95 percent of the women she interviewed actually suspected something was very wrong in the months leading up to their attack.

But even these early warning prodromal symptoms didn’t necessarily send women rushing to the doctor, as reported in Dr. McSweeney’s study published in the cardiology journal, Circulation.(1)  And for those women who did seek help early, doctors often failed to identify their problems as being heart-related.  Continue reading “Women’s early warning signs of a heart attack” →

How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Female survivors answer that question

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 20 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Having a heart attack felt nothing like how I thought it would feel.   For one thing, unlike sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating and you stop breathing, during my heart attack (myocardial infarction), my heart continued beating, and I was walking, talking and conscious throughout despite horrific symptoms – so how could I possibly be having a heart attack?

Like most women, I’d never really thought about my heart – except maybe years ago when running up that killer Quadra Street hill with my running group. Yet we know that heart disease kills six times more women than breast cancer does each year (in fact, it kills more women than all forms of cancer combined).

Women need to know all the potential symptoms of a heart attack – and seek immediate medical help if these symptoms do hit.  So I asked some survivors to share their very first symptoms. Their heart attack stories may surprise you:
 Continue reading “How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Female survivors answer that question” →