by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
Asking for – and accepting – help from other people can be a challenge for those of us who generally see ourselves as the helper, not the helpee. I come from a long line of Ukrainian women who are born helpers. My late mother’s reflexive response to neighbourhood news of a new baby or a broken leg, for example, was to turn on the oven and start baking for the occasion. . Continue reading “Why patients resist asking others for help”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
A quotation I like a lot (thank you, Bruce Springsteen!) is this: “You get used to anything. Sooner or later, it becomes your life.” As regular readers already know, I’ve been a heart patient for a long time, ever since surviving a misdiagnosed widow-maker heart attack in 2008 – enough time to really get used to the idea of living with heart disease.
In fact, that’s 17 years of getting used to saying things like “my cardiologist”.
In 2009, I launched this Heart Sisters blog. That’s 16 years of getting used to Sunday morning deadlines and reader comments.
Then in 2017, Johns Hopkins University Press published my book “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease” That’s eight years of getting used to publishers, editors, book reviews – and one unhinged (now former) publicity manager.
But on April 1st, I learned that the lump I’d found on my right breast while showering was a malignant tumor (called invasive ductal carcinoma – the most common form of breast cancer, accounting for 80 per cent of all breast cancer diagnoses).
So far, that’s only 75 days of getting used to being a cancer patient. That makes me a rank amateur. No wonder I feel so utterly overwhelmed. Continue reading “75 days – but who’s counting?”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
Women showing up at the Emergency Department seeking help due to their frightening cardiac symptoms can often feel “stopped at the gate” .This means they’re denied critical assessment and management of both acute heart disease signs and symptoms.
But signs and symptoms have different meanings. Your body’s physical symptoms are essentially something that feels out-of-the-ordinary, which may indicate a disease or medical condition. Symptoms are reported by the person who is experiencing them. And signs are what your health care professional can see or measure. These two words are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same. . Continue reading “Signs & symptoms: are they the same thing?”
by Carolyn Thomas ❤️ Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)
“If you have to get cancer, yours is a good kind to get!” That’s what someone recently said out loud to me. It’s the kind of thing you might say out loud if you were truly trying to cheer me up but weren’t quite sure what on earth to say to a heart patient with a newly diagnosed malignant breast tumor the size of a small grapefruit. Yale University professor of psychology Dr. Laurie Santos calls this cheerfully minimizing response to a cancer patient as “the kind that decides ‘bad’ negative emotions could be fixed if only we had a more ‘look on the bright side!’ attitude.”
Nobody wants to say the wrong thing to any newly-diagnosed patient, but that perky “good kind of cancer” comment landed with a hollow thud. It’s also an example of something that only a patient might say one day – when this is behind her.
Continue reading “When “Look on the bright side!” feels wrong”
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