Tag: women and heart attacks

Innocence lost: life after a heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

Written one month after my heart attack, June 2008:
“It isn’t the moment you are struck when you need courage, but the long uphill battle back to sanity and faith and security.”    Anne Morrow Lindbergh

.The wisdom of this quote strikes me every day.  In hindsight, the time I spent hospitalized in the Coronary Care Unit after my heart attack four weeks ago seems like the easiest part of this adventure.

Back then, I was surrounded every moment by round the clock state-of-the-art technology and highly-trained professionals whose only goal was to save my life and make me well enough to go home.  Continue reading “Innocence lost: life after a heart attack” →

‘Knowing & Going’ – act fast when heart attack symptoms hit

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 15 Comments

RLM067

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I finally realized that I was in big trouble during a five-hour flight from Ottawa to Vancouver.  But I’d been told emphatically by an Emergency Department physician two weeks earlier that my problem was just acid reflux – not a heart attack.

So for two weeks, I’d endured increasingly debilitating attacks of chest pain, pain radiating down my left arm, sweating and nausea.  But hey! – at least I knew it wasn’t my heart.  A man with the letters M.D. after his name had told me so.

I suffered two more attacks in the Ottawa airport before boarding, and two more during that endless flight to Vancouver.  At no time did I consider saying anything to the Air Canada flight attendants about my growing distress.  I sure didn’t want to be one of those passengers they have to turn the plane around for because of a medical emergency. How embarrassing would that be – and all just for indigestion? click to continue reading