When you fear being labelled a “difficult” patient

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 29 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

We arrive early for our doctor’s appointment. We wait patiently. We sit across from the doctor, and we nod and smile politely during our visit. We pick up the prescription for our meds and then we walk out the door to make room for the next patient waiting.

And sometimes we do this even when the discussion about our health care leaves us with unspoken concerns or unanswered questions. Most patients know what this feels like, so it’s reassuring to learn that academics are actually studying it: our fear of being labelled a “difficult patient”.  Continue reading “When you fear being labelled a “difficult” patient” →

Making heart-healthy decisions: are you on autopilot?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

With rare exception (like the woman I witnessed at the Minneapolis airport pouring Coca-Cola into her child’s baby bottle), most thinking adults already know perfectly well what’s good and bad for our bodies. Yet we continue to smoke, eat too much (of the wrong foods) and exercise too little.  A recent study suggests that instead of swamping us with health reminders to eat better and exercise more, public health initiatives should actually try targeting the knee-jerk behaviours that are making us fatter and sicker.*

This study, published in the journal Science, found that part of the problem is that current public health initiatives are still focused on educating us about what decisions we should and shouldn’t be making to improve health outcomes – as if we are actively contemplating the pros and cons of making each decision.  Trouble is, most of us are not.  Continue reading “Making heart-healthy decisions: are you on autopilot?” →

10 things I didn’t know about angioplasty until I read this book

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 26 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  @HeartSisters

heart-700141_1280 Being asked to write a book review is tricky. Authors hope you will be kind, while you hope the book at best might tell you something that every other book for heart patients hasn’t already told you. A review copy of the book Your Personal Guide: Angioplasty (Allen Jeremias, Susan S. Bartell)*  sat on my coffee table for weeks, until one day, I finally got tired of looking at this latest addition to my living room decor and decided to give it a go.   And within a very few pages, I learned some fascinating things I didn’t know before.   Continue reading “10 things I didn’t know about angioplasty until I read this book” →

How do patients know if their docs “will never be good”?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 44 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

It all started when cardiologist Dr. William Dillon of Louisville, Kentucky made this observation on his Twitter page about doing cardiac catheterization procedures:

As a two-time veteran of transradial (wrist) caths*, I felt just a wee bit alarmed by the last line of his tweet. We heart patients tend to get a wee bit alarmed by implications that those we trust may “never be good” at what they’ve just done to us, as described by the very people who work alongside them – those known as interventional cardiologists.

I felt similarly alarmed, by the way, during the recent FDA recall of defective Riata cardiac defibrillator leads when Dr. Laurence Epstein of Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital told Heartwire interviewers that ICD leads  are sometimes “implanted poorly”, bluntly adding:

“You can’t account for knuckleheads putting them in. Some lead failures are going to be expected . . . Others fail because people put them in in horrible ways.”   Continue reading “How do patients know if their docs “will never be good”?” →