I just received an email from a close friend of mine, Lauren. When I read it, I got goosebumps and teary eyes. She and I share something in common: Both of our mothers had heart attacks. Mine survived, hers didn’t. In her note she sent to a long list of friends, she wrote: “As many of you know my mother died 15 years ago from a heart attack. She absolutely knew something was wrong because she was in her doctor’s office parking lot when she died. She never made it into the office. She had no appt that day—but I believe she knew something was wrong.
I wonder if she had read an email like the one below—if she could have been saved. So I decided not to simply read the story below but to share it with all of you. Knowledge is power. Maybe you all can share it with the people closest to you and between all of us we can save a life.”
I want to thank Lauren and the courageous and compassionate woman who shared her story below. I don’t know her name, but it’s not important. She’s alive, which is all that matters. Please read this, ask others to do the same, and if you or anyone around you suspects a heart attack, get help immediately. Don’t do what my mother did. She called 911, the paramedics arrived and she told them she felt better. She refused to go to the hospital. The next day she had a heart attack. I wrote Eating for Lower Cholesterol: A Balanced Approach to Heart Health with Recipes Everyone Will Love for my mom and millions of other people out there who need to lower their cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Heart disease is preventable. It starts in childhood. Keep it out of your life and those you love!
“NURSE’S HEART ATTACK EXPERIENCE
I am an ER nurse and…I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the
best description I’ve ever read.
Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction)… Did you know that
women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when
experiencing heart attacks …. You know, the sudden stabbing pain in
the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor
that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience
with a heart attack.
I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO
prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might’ve brought it on. I
was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in
my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and
actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my
soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up..
A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve
been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with
a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve
swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is
most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so
fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass
of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my
initial sensation—the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of
anything since about 5:00 p.m.
After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little
squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it
was probably my aorta spasming), gaining speed as they continued racing
up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically
when administering CPR).
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out
into both jaws….. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was
happening — we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being
one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to
myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack!
I lowered the footrest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a
step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a
heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone
is or anywhere else .. But, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will
know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to
get up in moment.
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the
next room and dialed the Paramedics .. I told her I thought I was
having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum
and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just
stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over
immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to
unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me
when they came in.
I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and
lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their
examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their
ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but
I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the Cardiologist was
already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my
stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions
(probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I
couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer,
and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner
had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery
into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side
stents to hold open my right coronary artery.
I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have
taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the Paramedics, but
actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire
station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my
Cardiologist was already told to go to the OR in his scrubs and get
going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my
arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I
want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned
first hand.
1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not
the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my
sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women
than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they
were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take
some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping
they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up ……. which
doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly
like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is
unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to
have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it
might be!
2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an
asprin.. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself
to the ER – you are a hazard to others on the road. Do NOT have your
panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s
happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor — he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s
at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his
assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics.
He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved!
The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will
be notified later.
3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal
cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated
reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high
and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by
long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of
deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in
the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware.
The more we know, the better chance we could survive.
A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10
people, you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life.
**Please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends
(male & female) you care about!**”
More about Cholesterol, Health Tip, Healthy Life, Heart Attack, Heart Health, Women's Health
I thought I’d never see rhubarb in Malaysia, but today, I stumbled upon some in Hock Choon, a small grocery store specializing in imported goods. I was thrilled to find this vitamin-C-and-calcium-packed fruit (some will argue that it’s a vegetable), and particularly tickled to introduce it to my cook, Luann, who said that she had seen it before, but had no idea what to do with it (usually it’s the other way around…she’s introducing me to exotic foods). I rattled off a list of culinary delights made with rhubarb, from strawberry-rhubarb pie to a simple sauce for yogurt or ice cream. Luann made a batch of rhubarb sauce from my recipe in Eating for Pregnancy: The Essential Nutrition Guide and Cookbook for Today’s Mothers-to-Be. The kids devoured it on top of homemade yogurt sprinkled with a bit of homemade tropical granola. I call it tropical because I added bits of diced dried mango, orange rind, coconut, and walnuts to the honey-toasted oats…super yum! They were happy, and so was I.
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