by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
For weeks following hospital discharge after my “widow maker” heart attack, I kept forcing a “Fine, just fine!” smile when around others each day, desperately trying to make sense out of a cardiac diagnosis so shocking that it made no sense to me. What I later learned was that sense-making turns out to be a remarkably common early response to a serious medical crisis. Continue reading ““What? So what? Now what?” Self-reflection for the new heart patient”
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””
Heart Sisters 