Tag: widow maker heart attack

Revisiting the “widow maker” heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

In 2018, many viewers of the hit NBC television drama “This Is Us”  learned the term “widow maker heart attack” for the first time when the beloved main character Jack Pearson was pronounced dead. As TIME magazine later reported, online searches for that term spiked more than 5,000 per cent in the hours after that episode aired. Some viewers took to social media to tell their stories about loved ones who had died from – or survived – their own cardiac events.

Television is so educational!           .    Continue reading “Revisiting the “widow maker” heart attack” →

How kids cope when a parent has a heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

In response to last week’s blog post about cortisol (which featured Dr. Doreen Rabi’s surprising explanation of how this stress hormone rises among heart attack patients AFTER hospital discharge), Jan Oldenburg sent me a note. Her note simply said:

”  I’m guessing our children’s stress levels were higher, too. My husband Jon was only 46 at the time of his heart attack.”  . . .      Continue reading “How kids cope when a parent has a heart attack” →

Good news: your story is not yet locked in

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 16 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters 

I’ve been thinking about storytelling lately. I encounter a lot of patient stories from my Heart Sisters blog readers here, as well as from the women who raise a hand during my Heart-Smart Women public presentations. (I’ve learned that even the briefest of questions often hides a story behind it). I also tell stories – both my own, and other women’s. A heart patient’s story often kicks off with a profound this-can’t-be-happening-to-me sense of disbelief as we try to make sense out of something that makes no sense at all. Telling the story to others helps us do this at first. “How did this happen?” demand our worried family and friends while we lie there, overwhelmed – and thus our storytelling begins.

I’ve also learned that the way we tell that same story to ourselves and to others changes over time. And as NPR broadcaster Glynn Washington (of Snap Judgment) said in a recent interview, when you start changing your story, you change the storyteller:  Continue reading “Good news: your story is not yet locked in” →

Six lessons Emmi learned from her Hollywood Heart Attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Emmi S. Herman is the mother of three millennials and grandmother of two perfect grandchildren. As a doting grandmother myself, I can relate. I can especially relate to her because, like Emmi, I too survived what doctors call the “widow maker” heart attack (a misnomer that really needs fixing given how many women I know who have survived it. Physicians don’t, for example, call this serious cardiac event the “widower” maker, do they?)  Emmi is a children’s book author with expertise in early literacy skills. When not writing copy at her day job or at work on a memoir about her sister, she is in her car somewhere between New York and New Jersey.

Here’s how she describes the six important lessons she learned about having a heart attack.  Continue reading “Six lessons Emmi learned from her Hollywood Heart Attack” →

When doctors use words that hurt

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Consider hearing the scary diagnosis of “heart failure” tripping lightly from your doctor’s lips as if it were no big deal. Can there be anything more terrifying and demoralizing than hearing that your heart is “failing”?  And the words don’t even  accurately reflect this condition, which actually means that your heart is not pumping blood as well as it should. 

So why did doctors come up with this heart failure name, and what on earth were they thinking when they decided it would be a good idea to actually say these words out loud to Real Live Patients? And is there a less hurtful term they could use instead?   Continue reading “When doctors use words that hurt” →