sharings from Pauline O'Shea, Patient Advocate, Public speaker, Media spokesperson & Writer on the challenges & healing that life has to offer
Heart
As a heart patient who has survived multiple heart attacks as a result of a condition called SCAD (Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection) combined with a medical misdiagnosis, and then went on to experience a cardiac arrest, open heart surgery and a diagnosis of heart failure, you may think I'd sort of fallen out of love… Continue reading ‘A HEART’, by Pauline O’Shea… a poem written for everyone who has one!
On this month, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. On the very day I brought my beautiful baby daughter home from the hospital, I suffered a condition called SCAD, where a tear occurred in one of my coronary arteries, causing a heart attack. I was 38 years old. A trip to A+E, a medical… Continue reading 10 YEARS on from a SCAD & HEART FAILURE diagnosis … here are some of the things I’ve learned…
I am blessed to have my mother still with me, but I know many who do not. I know those too who have lost a child, and those who longed for them but never had them, both having to live with absence in their hearts, often invisible to the outside world. I have met people… Continue reading ‘A MOTHER’S DAY FOR ALL’, reflection and poem, by Pauline O’Shea
As I lay in my bed in a large cardiac ward some years ago after open heart surgery, I became somewhat fixated on a tiny window on the opposite side of the ward. It wasn’t even showing a great view, unless you count a metal fire escape as ‘artistic’. If I was asked at the… Continue reading NATURE’S HEALING… science shows that connecting with nature can improve our physical health… so is it time Doctors prescribed ‘Nature’ to patients?
Main photo by Michelle Leman from Pexels thank you to Michelle and to her brave and beautiful model. In a recent conversation with a fellow heart failure patient, who has had the condition for five years, she began to cry when she talked about her interactions with a lifelong friend post diagnosis. With her permission, I quote her… Continue reading The INVISIBILITY of our illnesses or struggles can be an extra challenge, but there are ways to overcome…
We all do it… criticise our bodies. We find them too big here, too small there, too round here and maybe even too flat there. When you’re a patient the criticism levels can rise even further… the heart that won’t beat like it ‘should’, the body that won’t deliver enough energy to meet your life… Continue reading In GRATITUDE to the bodies that keep us alive each day….
Covid 19 has been a challenge for everyone. Two years of uncertainty and at times tremendous fear, has taken its toll. It is understandable therefore to see the jubilant faces of so many, staring out of our newspapers and newsfeeds, as they celebrate our departure from so many restrictions. But what about the medically vulnerable… Continue reading Our society has reopened, but have the medically vulnerable become a “forgotten people”?
In case you missed it, last Monday was called ‘Blue Monday’ (Jan 17th), declared the official saddest and most depressing day of the year back in 2005, by Cliff Arnall, a tutor at the time, attached to Cardiff University, in response to a request from a travel company to provide a scientific formula for the… Continue reading Yes, perhaps we are finally emerging from Covid, but what if you, or a loved one is still FEELING BLUE?
When I woke up in ICU after emergency open heart surgery, I discovered quickly that as well as a shattered body and a shattered mind, I now possessed a shattered faith, in myself, my heart and my God. Up to then, life seemed largely like a Lego construction to me, built up brick by brick,… Continue reading Finding FAITH in my heart once more…
While for many of us, Christmas will be a very, or relatively, merry affair, for some, it may not. If you have lost a loved one, a job, your good bill of health, your home, or your relationship over the last year, then Christmas might involve coping with that empty chair, or that other gaping… Continue reading Christmas for the broken-hearted…. a tale of finding light after loss
The healing of life 