Revisiting: “All I want for Christmas is NOT in a gift box”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    @HeartSisters 

My family tells me I’m “impossible” when it comes to picking out a gift for me. I am rarely able to offer them even a single helpful hint. Instead, I plead with them most years not to buy me “more stuff”.  I don’t want stuff. One only has to visit the average yard sale to witness the inevitable future graveyard of all that stuff. Bread machines. Chia pets. Exercise bikes. Candles. Aside from absolute necessities of life (like groceries or my paper crafting supplies), there are few things I now need or want.

Well, there are things I need and want, but hardly any of them come from a store or in gift boxes. I made a list of these last December. Let’s revisit that list to see if Santa was paying attention.        Continue reading “Revisiting: “All I want for Christmas is NOT in a gift box”” →

Unseen, unheard: the commonly shared lived experience of patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 17 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

At first, I was surprised that so many women living with breast cancer were following my Heart Sisters blog. I’ve never had breast cancer and I rarely write about breast cancer (except here, for example, on the known link between breast cancer treatment and subsequent heart disease). Yet what I was soon to learn was that heart patients have lots in common with cancer patients, or with anybody else who has been blindsided by a serious medical crisis. Although the diagnosis may be different, we can face the same shock, fear, confusion, pain and exhaustion experienced by all who suddenly know what it’s like to become a patient.

Abigail Johnston is one of those breast cancer patients. We follow each other’s blogs. She was a 38-year old lawyer and mother of two boys when she was diagnosed with Stage IV Metatastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) in 2017. She writes about this on her compelling blog, No Half Measures from her home in Florida.  Every word of her recent post called “Unseen and Unheard“  hit home for me.        .       Continue reading “Unseen, unheard: the commonly shared lived experience of patients” →

Dear Carolyn: “I take issue with the heart attack terms STEMI and NSTEMI”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 12 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

Today, in this Dear Carolyn episode (our 11th in the occasional series featuring Heart Sisters readers sharing their heart patient perspectives), we’ll attempt to address my reader Eva’s observations about how our heart attacks are currently classified:

“I take issue with the terms STEMI (the most serious type of heart attack) and NSTEMI (a slightly less serious heart attack). But both types of heart attack have a serious impact on our lives and how we live them.”             

♥

Dear Eva,

The day I first read your comment in response to an earlier Heart Sisters post coincided with the tragic heart attack death of a woman in an American hospital’s Emergency Department. Continue reading “Dear Carolyn: “I take issue with the heart attack terms STEMI and NSTEMI”” →

Revisiting the “widow maker” heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

In 2018, many viewers of the hit NBC television drama “This Is Us”  learned the term “widow maker heart attack” for the first time when the beloved main character Jack Pearson was pronounced dead. As TIME magazine later reported, online searches for that term spiked more than 5,000 per cent in the hours after that episode aired. Some viewers took to social media to tell their stories about loved ones who had died from – or survived – their own cardiac events.

Television is so educational!           .    Continue reading “Revisiting the “widow maker” heart attack” →