Tag: medicine

The myth of the “Hollywood Heart Attack” for women

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments
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Of course you know what a heart attack looks like:
  • The victim stops what they’re doing.
  • Their eyes open wide.
  • They clutch their chest, make some funny noises, and then they collapse to the floor. Right?

Wrong. (Don’t believe everything you see on TV!)  That scenario describes sudden cardiac arrest, not heart attack. The two are not the same thing at all. The heart attack awareness campaign called “Make The Call – Don’t Miss a Beat” tells us how symptoms of the classic  “Hollywood Heart Attack” can differ from the actual reality for most women.   Continue reading “The myth of the “Hollywood Heart Attack” for women” →

Why we keep telling – and re-telling – our heart attack stories

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

A woman in the grocery store calls out from the neighbouring checkout line: “Hey! You’re the heart lady, right?” She continues, in what seems a much-too-loud voice, that she had been in the audience at one of my annual Cardiac Café presentations at the university. But “heart lady?” Is this really how I want to be known and recognized for the rest of my natural life?   Continue reading “Why we keep telling – and re-telling – our heart attack stories” →

Stupid things that doctors say to heart patients

~ 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” →

Top 10 posts from Heart Sisters for 2010

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

2010 has been quite the year here at Heart Sisters! The little blog that began in 2009 after my heart attack simply as “cardiac rehab for my brain” has now published 257 articles, attracting over 100,000 visitors. New articles arrive here about every four days, depending on my health, and I never run out of emerging news about women’s heart disease, cardiac research, heart-smart recipes or heart-related trivia to write about!

The Toronto-based magazine More interviewed me this year for a February 2011 feature about Canadian women who have launched health-related websites, and a number of essays here have also been picked up by other much larger health sites, here, here or here, for example. Hundreds of people now follow Heart Sisters on Twitter, repost my links on their Facebook sites, or subscribe directly via email to receive updates on new postings.   Continue reading “Top 10 posts from Heart Sisters for 2010” →