March 3, 2006 at 12:56AM When did heart disease become cardiac disease?
Bit of background on this first. About a fortnight ago, my father started getting chest pains. He went to the doctor, who told him to go to the emergency room in Sligo General Hospital. After a week waiting for this test and that, he eventually had an angiogram revealing an artery close to blockage. A few months more, and he could have had a heart attack, which would have caused serious damage to his heart. It’s too far gone to be cleared chemically, so he needs to get a stent put in the artery to keep it open. All in all, he’s pretty lucky.
However, it’s caused an awful lot of chaos. Between everything, this is the first free moment I’ve had since I got back from Boston. It’s also costing my parents quite a bit, so I’ll see what I can do to help them out.
Anyway, this morning I travelled up to Sligo with my mother to visit him in hospital (and later spend the rest of the day delivering books for the Irish Independent!), when a piece can on the radio about heart disease and heart attacks. Except they didn’t use those regular familar names. Instead they called them “cardiac disease” and “sudden cardiac death”.
Why?
What’s wrong with the names we’re all familiar with? What is it that motivates people to invent new names and phrases--sayeth the conlanger--for commonplace things and events with names and phrases we all know? Is there any reason why the terms “heart disease” and “heart attack” are deprecated? Muppets!
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