Tag: making sense of illness

Can “mental muscle” help us recuperate?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 1 Comment

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

Dr. Amy Morin described her early career as a psychotherapist who“intended  to help others build mental strength”. She could never have imagined, however,  that she would soon need what she calls “mental muscle” to help herself. When Amy was just 23, her mother died of a brain aneurysm. Three years later, a heart attack killed Amy’s young husband, Lincoln – a tragedy that was followed by her father-in-law’s sudden death.

This is what she wrote about surviving the pain of those losses:

“I was a 26-year old widow with no Mom. Losing the most important people in my life sent me on a quest to learn how I could stay mentally strong.”  

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“What? So what? Now what?” Self-reflection for the new heart patient

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

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” →

How we adapt after a heart attack depends on what we believe the diagnosis means

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

There are at least 12 commonly used measurement tools available to the medical profession that look at how patients navigate “the search for meaning in chronic illness”. Clinical tools like the Psychosocial Adjustment To Illness Inventory or the Meaning of Illness Questionnaire have been used on cancer and AIDS patients, as well as others living with chronic disease. But research, including this study, has found that limiting factors in the success of such tools included “the infrequent use of some of the instruments clinically or in research.”

I can’t help but wonder why these readily available assessment tools are not being administered routinely to patients who are freshly diagnosed with heart disease – a serious medical crisis that begs to be examined for its influence on our “psychosocial adjustment” to it. I only learned about these long-established tools two years after my own heart attack, and by then my adjustment period was pretty well done.
 Continue reading “How we adapt after a heart attack depends on what we believe the diagnosis means” →