Category: Women and heart attacks

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

“All the SCAD ladies, put your hands up!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Heart attack survivor Laura Haywood-Cory, one of my heart sisters and a fellow “graduate” of the WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium at Mayo Clinic, emailed me with great excitement last week:

“The Wall Street Journal interview with Katherine, me and Dr. Hayes is now live!!”

This WSJ piece tells the inspiring story of how heart attack survivor  Katherine Leon, with Laura’s help, convinced a world-famous hospital to launch research on the rare and deadly heart condition they had each survived: spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD.

(See also: How I Used to Describe SCAD. And what I’ve Learned Since (2021)

Continue reading ““All the SCAD ladies, put your hands up!”” →

“God punishes bad children!” – or, why you have heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

When I was a little girl growing up in a rabidly catholic family of seven, my mother had a standard response to anything bad that happened to her children (like even just stubbing a toe on the coffee table leg as we skipped across the living room floor):

“See? God punishes bad children!”

Under her tutelage, my siblings and I learned a couple of important life lessons:

1.  that we were basically bad children (this fits right in with the catholic church’s doctrine of original sin, so likely made perfect sense to us at the time), and

2. that God must be very, very busy keeping track of every opportunity to personally administer the punishment that my sibs and I so richly deserved.

When children like us grow up and get diagnosed with, oh, let’s say –  heart disease, it’s proof positive that we’re just getting what we had coming.   Continue reading ““God punishes bad children!” – or, why you have heart disease” →

Heart disease = most costly condition for women

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 1 Comment

by Carolyn Thomas

The cost of treating women for heart disease leads a list of the top 10 most expensive conditions for women, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The analysis by this American agency reveals that the top 10 most costly conditions in terms of health care expenditures for women were:

  • heart disease (over $43.6 billion)
  • cancer
  • mental disorders
  • trauma-related disorders
  • osteoarthritis
  • chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma
  • hypertension (high blood pressure)
  • Diabetes
  • back problems
  • hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol levels)

The first few thoughts that hit me while reading this list were:  Continue reading “Heart disease = most costly condition for women” →

How swearing during a heart attack can ease the pain

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

“Swearing can relieve pain – but only if you’re the kind of person who rarely resorts to cursing and swearing in normal life!” That’s the finding of a U.K. study presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference last May.

This may be particularly significant for females, a demographic that tends to swear less frequently than our male counterparts in everyday life anyway. Hubbies, in fact, are sometimes utterly shocked to hear their normally sweet-tongued wives let loose during the pain of prolongued childbirth. Ditto for heart attacks.  Continue reading “How swearing during a heart attack can ease the pain” →