Category: Women and heart attacks

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

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters           .  

When Edward Davies was with the British Medical Journal, he attended the Lown Institute conference in Boston, where he was reminded of some unlikely wisdom from boxer Mike Tyson. In the run up to a big fight, he explained, Iron Mike was being bombarded with media questions about how he intended to deal with his powerful challenger. Did he have a strategy?  What was his plan? The boxer’s response was simple:

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

In boxing terms, as Davies wrote in the BMJ, this is completely literal sound advice, but as a figurative metaphor for life, it’s not bad, either:

“Listening to a patient panel here at the Lown Institute conference, I was reminded that this is a worldview that doctors might do well to remember.”

Most patients diagnosed with a life-altering diagnosis can readily identify with what that metaphorical punch in the mouth feels like.  Continue reading ““Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”” →

Women, controversial statin guidelines, and common sense

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 28 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

101109expIf you’re a heart patient, I’m betting that you’re already taking one of the cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. That’s because these drugs – with brand names like Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor or any of their generic forms – are routinely prescribed to those diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. Many studies (largely funded by the drug companies that make statins) suggest that, for heart attack survivors, these drugs may help to significantly lower our risk of having another cardiac event. It’s what doctors call “secondary prevention”.

Some studies further suggest that statins are also useful for those who’ve never had heart disease, but who do have high LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol – what’s called “primary prevention”. But recently, statins hit the front page of The New York Times with a big fat *splat* when new clinical practice guidelines for treating/preventing heart disease were released by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology (both heart organizations that are coincidentally largely funded by drug companies, too). The guidelines essentially said: from now on, forget about your LDL numbers. It’s all about your risk factors now. 

The likely result of this change, as I observed here and here, is the recommendation that, as long as you have a detectable pulse, you need to take statins. 

Continue reading “Women, controversial statin guidelines, and common sense” →

The weirdness of Post-Heart Attack Stun

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 39 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Jodi JacksonI‘m laughing right out loud as I type this post, although I am the last person you’d think would ever laugh at another person’s heart attack story.  Usually. . .  But I love Jodi Jackson’s concept of “Post-Heart Attack Stun” – and I just had to laugh at her delicious examples of this concept at work, both during and after her heart attack at age 42.

Although I didn’t realize until I read about Jodi that there was even an official name for this cardiology concept, I sure knew what she was talking about.   

Post-Heart Attack Stun is what Jodi calls the period following a heart attack where everything seems so surreal that you really don’t absorb what has just happened.    Continue reading “The weirdness of Post-Heart Attack Stun” →

Dr. Barbara Keddy: “I was pitifully ignorant about heart disease”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 31 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

heart BehanceI’m very pleased to share this with you, my heart sisters – although this is not a happy story.  It’s essentially the journal of a heart attack. The author is Dr. Barbara Keddy, a teacher of nurses, professor emerita at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and author of the book Women and Fibromyalgia* – a condition that Barbara herself has lived with for over 40 years. Barbara and I first “met” each other online when we both happened to be named recipients of the 2009 Women’s Health Hero awards from Our Bodies Ourselves of Boston that year – she representing the east coast of Canada, and I out here on the west.

I’ve been reading her Women & Fibromyalgia blog and quoting her wise words ever since (here, here and here, for example). And we’ve been casually emailing back and forth for four years – until one day in January, when I received a terse one-line message from her: she had just survived a heart attack.

Barbara’s experience is unique because she’d already been living with the constant pain of a debilitating chronic illness for decades. What happens when such a person gets hit with the double whammy of a serious heart attack on top of everything else?  Here’s her story, in her own words:  Continue reading “Dr. Barbara Keddy: “I was pitifully ignorant about heart disease”” →