Your heart does amazing things for you every day.
Most of us take for granted that it will keep happily ticking for years to come.
Don’t find out your heart is in danger after the fact, as these women did.
Let their lessons inspire you to live a longer, heart-healthier life.
It felt as if it were freezing deep inside the marrow of my bones and up through my skin.
I managed to make it home, where I felt sick, threw up and went to bed.
This was right in the middle of the swine flu scare, so I assumed I’d caught it.
But I was in total denial.
Doctors performed open-heart bypass surgery right away to reroute blood flow around the torn arteries.
I’m lucky I’m alivea SCAD is usually diagnosed postmortem.
I can’t believe I read that list of heart attack symptoms and stayed at work.
If I had gone to the hospital after my first event, I could have prevented the second one.
Even so, a month after I turned 28, my worst fear came true.
It started when I woke up at 2:30 A.M. and threw up.
I was sweating and felt pain running down my left arm.
I’m a nurse, so I knew those were classic heart attack signs.
I woke up my fiance and told him I had to get to the hospital.
When the doctors saw mea 28-year-old marathonerthey said, “You’re not who we expected to see!”
I’m nervous, but he said he’d even run it with me!
I was working long hours as an attorney, and I was constantly dizzy and out of breath.
One day, while talking to a client, I passed out.
When I came to, my coworkers had to persuade me to go to the ER.
I want to test your heart."
I thought he was joking.
I was going furniture shopping with my boyfriend that afternoon!
I didn’t realize how serious it was until the technician’s eyes popped during the echocardiogram.
That’s when I thought, Oh, my God.
Am I going to die?
I kept asking the doctors, “Was there anything I could have done?”
They said no, that it might be congenital, but they don’t know the cause for sure.
I feel great, and last summer I hiked Tajumulco, the tallest peak in Central America.
My body was telling me a story, but I wasn’t listening.
I felt totally fine that morning in 2001 while I was getting ready for work.
But as I grabbed my keys, my ears started to ring.
My eyes felt as if they were crossing, and my left side started trembling uncontrollably.
Joe took me to the hospital, where I happened to work in the marketing department.
It showed evidence of a prior stroke in the lower part of the brain.
I know some stroke victims never recover.
The doctors tried to figure out why someone who ate healthfully and had never smoked had a stroke.
(See box at right.)
Because I was fit, I recovered quickly.
After about eight weeks of physical therapy, I got most of my movement back.
My left hand still shakes when I’m tired or dehydrated, but that’s the only side effect.
That’s scary, but it also makes me appreciate every moment I’m given now.
