sharings from Pauline O'Shea, Patient Advocate, Public speaker, Media spokesperson & Writer on the challenges & healing that life has to offer
I've been ill since last I wrote. It lasted for weeeeeeks. A virus. Not Covid... officially... but a definite stepbrother or stepsister. First came the excessive tired, then the cough, the sore throat, the weak limbs... it felt like someone had pulled the bath plug out... Then there was the chest infection, the reduced oxygen,… Continue reading ‘LISTEN TO YOUR BODY’!… yes, but what happens to the rest of your life while you do🤦♀️ ??
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…
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….
It happens to us all. We have the blazing row with someone, or take offence to what they said, or choose to ignore the one who has hurt us, certain that our hostility is the right and only course of action to take. Fueled by pride and anger in the aftermath of the 'offence', we… Continue reading “Finding grace”… how healing can become a beautiful thing… by Pauline O’Shea
The healing of life 