It’s not what you do. It’s who you are.

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

In 2015, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about virtues in his column called “The Moral Bucket List”.  But he was actually writing about two different sets of virtues: our résumé virtues and our eulogy virtues.

The résumé virtues are what you do: the workplace skills you’d talk about when job-hunting.  The eulogy virtues are who you are:  what people will say about you at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, generous, funny, honest, trustworthy, etc. Both types of virtues are important and worth pursuing, but as David reminds us, only eulogy virtues have lasting value and legacy.  But depending on who’s doing the asking, it seems those résumé virtues appear to be far more important to certain people.    . Continue reading “It’s not what you do. It’s who you are.” →

#PatientsIncluded “Lite”: sort of, maybe, but not really

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

It’s fashionable these days for medical conference organizers, journal editors and researchers to boast about how “patient-focused” they are whenever they seek perspectives shared by patients with lived experience. But does boasting make it so?

Some of this patient focus has seemed a bit tepid to me. It’s as if they’re saying they want the patient voice – sort of, maybe, but not really. Here’s what I mean by that:  Continue reading “#PatientsIncluded “Lite”: sort of, maybe, but not really” →

Habituation: “Give me a pain that I’m used to!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

When I first read about a pain study called “Give Me a Pain That I Am Used To”, it made perfect sense to me.1  Published in the journal Nature: Science Reports, this came out about the same time I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis a couple of years ago – which I did NOT see coming.  Ironically, breathtakingly painful arthritis symptoms (starting in my left knee and right hand at that time) felt far more debilitating to me than the daily chest pain of refractory angina I’d been living with since my 2008 heart attack.

This may seem counter-intuitive. We know that chest pain can be a dangerous and even deadly symptom. Knee and wrist pain is rarely if ever fatal! It occurred to me that maybe I was feeling extremely distressed by my new arthritis symptoms because I’d simply not yet become habituated to the new pain in the way I’d already become habituated to my longstanding cardiac pain. Continue reading “Habituation: “Give me a pain that I’m used to!”” →

Cardiac College for (Freshly Diagnosed) Women: “Your heart is like a house”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

I typically spend about one hour per year checking in with my wonderful cardiologist (barring setbacks that may send me back into the hospital) but like many/most heart patients, I spend 8,765 hours per year managing the day-to-day reality of cardiac symptoms, concerns and meds on my own.

I learned long ago while participating in my free Pain Self-Management classes (thank you Canada, commie-pinko land of socialized medicine!) that I needed a basic understanding of how the heart functions – not a medical-jargon-med-school-textbook-understanding, but a solid patient-friendly one.  I wish I’d had this helpful and jargon-free overview back then describing the heart-as-a-house – from the Toronto-based resource (more free stuff!) called Cardiac College for Women.  For example:     . Continue reading “Cardiac College for (Freshly Diagnosed) Women: “Your heart is like a house”” →