by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
As I have written here earlier:
“There are few life events more stressful, in my considered opinion, than surviving a heart attack.
“Not only is the actual cardiac event a traumatic and overwhelming experience in itself, but what very few cardiologists tell us before they boot us out the hospital door is how debilitating the day-to-day angst about every subsequent bubble and twinge can actually be. Continue reading “No such thing as a “small” heart attack”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
This EKG* belongs to a person who died of Sudden Cardiac Arrest on the golf course, approximately nine minutes after his heart went into a state of ventricular fibrillation (VF). Sudden cardiac death almost always results from VF – a rapid and disorganized activation of the heart’s ventricles. The best way to stop VF is to defibrillate the heart to try to restore regular rhythm and restore normal contractions through the use of electric shock. Continue reading “What sudden cardiac arrest looks like”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Physician Dr. Robin Schoenthaler once wrote in a Boston Globe column that, instead of looking for men who like those long romantic walks on the beach at sunset, women would do well to picture how the man of your dreams handles things when you’re sick. In fact, her recommendation for ideal husband material is a man who will hold your purse in the hospital waiting room.
It can be rare to hear in person from men about what it’s really like to live with us while we’re living with heart disease. It isn’t often, for example, that our WomenHeart online support community of thousands of female heart patients on Inspire.com hears directly from a real live male. But when Steve Kirsche of Wethersfield, CT stopped by to write about his own perspective as the spouse of a heart patient, I asked him for permission to reprint his personal observations here for you. Here’s what Steve had to tell us: Continue reading “A wife’s heart disease teaches her husband a big lesson”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
It all started when I was contacted by Melanie Glanz, a television producer with CBC News from Toronto. She was working on a report about hospital food. Would I be willing to be interviewed for this news feature?
Hospital food? I assured Melanie that I was not a dietitian or nutritionist or hospital administrator. Not an expert on hospital food at all – rather, more like just a mere victim. But she persisted. She had read my blog article called Hospital Food: The Best Reason to Keep Your Heart Healthy and Avoid Hospitalization. And she told me she really needed a patient’s perspective on such an important topic.
I agreed, albeit a tad reluctantly. What was there to say, after all, about hospital food that hasn’t already been whined about by generations of patients? “Hospital food is bad!” After that, I didn’t think I’d have much else to say. Continue reading “My debut on the national news”
Heart Sisters 