by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Marilyn Gardner, in her 2014 book called “Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging“) wrote about a compelling conversation she once had:
Yet our physicians aren’t trained to embrace our stories, but instead to ask right away, “What brings you here today?” to kick-start a brief Q&A that can most efficiently solve the diagnostic mystery sitting across from them. . . Continue reading ““The doctors want my symptoms but not my stories””
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Many years before I finally left a decades-long professional relationship with my family physician, I had observed distressing changes in her practice. I didn’t say anything about these changes at first. They began with her new all-cash medical aesthetics clinic (think: nonstop before-and-after Botox videos looping in every exam room).
She did not post an actual sign in her waiting room telling her longtime patients what we all knew: “I Am No Longer Interested in the Practice of Family Medicine” – but everything about her behaviours clearly announced that she’d already moved on without telling us. . Continue reading “The medical hierarchy shift”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters ♥ December 16, 2018
Our physicians are highly trained experts in providing medical care, but it’s their patients who have “skin in the game”. This odd phrase is believed to have originated in the financial sector to describe senior investment advisors who demonstrate their confidence in a company by putting their own money (their own “skin”) into the company in order to build investor confidence. So if stock prices fall, they stand to lose – just like their clients will. Advisors who choose not to do this may be every bit as smart, but they have no skin in the game. Continue reading “Skin in the game: taking women’s cardiac misdiagnosis seriously”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
When a blockage or spasm in one or more of your coronary arteries stops allowing freshly oxygenated blood to feed your heart muscle, a heart attack can happen. The faster you can access emergency treatment to address that culprit artery, the better your chances of being appropriately diagnosed. The period of time between your first symptoms and actively getting the help you need can be divided into three phases:
Only the first phase is the one you have complete control over. So don’t blow it. . .
Continue reading “Downplaying symptoms: just pretend it’s NOT a heart attack”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
When I interviewed Dr. Catherine Kreatsoulas* about the research paper she presented last month in Vancouver at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress(1), her previous heart study caught my attention, too.
I was surprised by her explanation from that earlier research on how some women describe their chest pain during a heart attack (2), as she told me: . .
Continue reading “Words matter when we describe our heart attack symptoms”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I’ve been fascinated by studies on why women wait so long to get medical help despite heart attack symptoms ever since the spring of 2008 when I spent way too long before seeking help for my own increasingly debilitating signs. I sometimes replay that two-week experience in my little peabrain, and I ask myself the same question being asked by a team of Harvard researchers in a new study:
“Why do women wait longer than men before seeking help even when they’re in the middle of a frickety-frackin’ heart attack?” .
Continue reading “The symptomatic tipping point during heart attack”
