We survive it – but do we ever recover from a heart attack?

January 17, 2011June 27, 2022 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

Out of the chaos surrounding my heart attack emerged one overriding obsession: to just be normal again. I was desperate to feel like my old self, all the while feeling that nothing around me felt remotely normal any longer. I was tired of being “sick”. I wanted my old life back.

And I didn’t want to be a heart patient anymore. One day, in fact, weeks after I’d been discharged from hospital, I marched around the apartment gathering up all the get well cards and bouquets of beautiful flowers that filled each room – and trashed them all. (It didn’t work, by the way. I still had heart disease, albeit along with a tidied-up home!)

What I really wanted was some kind of guarantee that I’d recover perfectly one day very soon. But according to psychologist Dr. Lisa Holland, promising patients living with a chronic illness that we will “recover” may simply be setting us up for a situation that’s essentially unattainable. Instead, she warns, what we can do is rebuild our lives and move forward. Continue reading “We survive it – but do we ever recover from a heart attack?” →

Stupid things that doctors say to heart patients

January 13, 2011May 7, 2015 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 22 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

“It’s definitely not your heart – it’s just acid reflux!” That was the first regrettable (and wrong) thing that the E.R. doctor said to me, despite my textbook heart attack symptoms of crushing chest pain, sweating, nausea, and pain radiating down my left arm. When I raised the topic of stupid comments on Inspire’s WomenHeart online community, cardiac survivors jumped right in.

These women were all too happy to share some of the real-life comments that physicians have actually said out loud to them. Most of these dismissive comments were made shortly before these patients subsequently had to undergo life-saving cardiac procedures. Each comment is true; the names of the physicians have not been disclosed in order to protect the stupid (a word, by the way, which I’m using here in its most charitable dictionary definition: “lacking common sense, dazed, unable to think clearly”). Here goes: Continue reading “Stupid things that doctors say to heart patients” →

“The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”

January 9, 2011January 8, 2011 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

Is there any veggie better than the humble and versatile potato? It is and always has been my very favourite comfort food. Potato pancakes with those crispy brown edges, twice-baked stuffed potatoes oozing with cottage-cheesey goodness, those exquisite first-of-the-season new potatoes tossed in my mother’s incomparable dill sauce, creamy garlic mashed at Sunday dinner – heaven, absolute heaven, every single forkful!

But potatoes sometimes get a bad rap for being fattening (especially given all the goop we like to scoop or pour or melt over them) and not quite as healthy as, say, the boring broccoli floret. Not so for Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission. Chris ate nothing but potatoes throughout October and November of 2010 (that’s about 20 5-ounce potatoes a day for 60 days) to help publicize the nutritional value of potatoes. He varied his clinically-supervised menu by eating things like potato pickles and even (seriously!) potato ice cream. (Read on for some of my favourite – and more conventional! – heart-healthy potato recipes!) Continue reading ““The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”” →