Tag: women’s heart disease

This is your heart (my Heart Month interview)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Heart Month (aka February) typically means a flurry of once-a-year media attention to the important subject of women’s heart health, so I like to take advantage of as many interview requests as I can every February.  Strike while the iron’s hot!  Make hay while the sun shines! Drink the glass of wine while it’s sitting right in front of you!  Okay, that last rule I just made up…

One such interview request this year was from Media Planet’s 2016 Cardiovascular Health Campaign launched by Canada’s National Post newspaper and online. Here’s the text of that interview with Taylor Mihail of Media Planet. Continue reading “This is your heart (my Heart Month interview)” →

“It’s not your heart. It’s just _____” (insert misdiagnosis)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 46 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

It’s fair to say that you would not be reading these words had my heart attack not been misdiagnosed with a cheerful “You are in the right demographic for acid reflux!”  Had I been correctly diagnosed, admitted and appropriately treated during that first trip to the Emergency Department, I would likely never have started this blog in 2009. Nor would I be still writing years later about female heart patients being misdiagnosed in mid-heart attack.

We know that women continue to be under-diagnosed – and then under-treated even when appropriately diagnosed – compared to men presenting with cardiac symptoms.  In fact, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, female heart patients in their 50s and younger are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed than our male counterparts.(1)

You know your body. You KNOW when something is just not right. Even if, like the following women, you too are sent home, do not hesitate to return to Emergency or to your physician if symptoms worsen.

Here’s my latest round of true tales from women whose cardiovascular disease is still being missed.    Continue reading ““It’s not your heart. It’s just _____” (insert misdiagnosis)” →

Heart attacks: “Men explode, but women erode”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

heart-460546_1280Los Angeles cardiologist Dr. Noel Bairey Merz believes that the biggest issue facing women heart patients is that as a society we have been programmed to think of heart disease as a man’s problem. During a presentation in Australia last year, she told her audience:

“The fatty build-up of plaque in a coronary artery causing a heart attack will usually rupture or ‘explode’ in men.

“But in women, it will often be a much smaller, more subtle event, caused by ‘erosion’, not explosion. 

“Often their symptoms may throw doctors off track to the wrong diagnosis, and in many cases, women won’t even know they have had a heart attack until it’s too late.”   .

Continue reading “Heart attacks: “Men explode, but women erode”” →

“Is my bra too tight?” – a poem for heart patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 44 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Numbness in the lip. Persistent cough. Pain between shoulder blades. Buzzing elbows. I thought I’d heard just about every possible vague or unusual heart disease symptom in women so far, but there’s one that I had never heard about until just recently.  And since then, women seem to be coming out of the woodwork to add that they too have experienced this peculiar cardiac symptom.   Continue reading ““Is my bra too tight?” – a poem for heart patients” →