Share Your Heart
Share Your Heart is dedicated to the stories of Women who are Heart Attack Survivors. I'ts a place to learn from the heart felt trials of Women who against the odds have managed to survive their ordeal, and a resource of information about their experiences. Our hope is that you are informed by their writings and that you will choose to share your story here with other women.
To share your own story with the
Queen of Hearts Foundation, simply send email to
info@qohf.org.
Please indicate in your email whether we may publish your
story to the website, and if it's OK to use your full name.
Katy's Story
Katy Attebery - Co-founder of The Queen of Hearts Foundation
Listen to your heart. It’s telling you something. The key is to understand what it’s saying. I had heard all about risk factors – cholesterol, exercise, smoking, obesity. But no one ever told me about the symptoms. The burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. The pain underneath my left shoulder blade. My inability to take a deep breath. The metallic taste in my mouth. The spots I was seeing in front of my eyes. The nausea. “ I’ll deal with it later” I said. Only later was almost too late. Three heart attacks over a 5 day period of time. Misdiagnosis: #1 anxiety attack; #2 reflux; #3 gall bladder attack. A cardiac blood enzyme test. I lay in the ER unconscious for 4 hours before a cardiologist was called in. “Where are the results of the cardiac blood enzyme test?” “Not done” was the response. Within a few minutes the cardiologist knew exactly what had happened. Coronary infarction. A nitroglycerine drip to keep me alive, heart catheterization, an angioplasty, a stent in the lower anterior descending artery. All performed through my femoral artery. And here I am 10 years later. Alive. Well. Healthy. As Cofounder of the Queen of Hearts Foundation, we believe that by sharing stories like this one we can help save lives. So, listen up, ladies. Your heart is talking to you!
Stephanie Hammar-Samuels
Stephanie Hammar-Samuels never thought of having a heart attack. On a hike up Mt. Herman near Colorado Springs in Fall 2005 she was the one nagging her buddies to go faster. The next morning she woke up nauseated. She assumed she'd come down with the flu, but the urge to vomit persisted for more than a week and was sometimes so strong she had to pull her car to the side of the road. She thought she might be pregnant, but the home test came back negative. Then she noticed she was short of breath walking up a flight of stairs.
Hammar-Samuels was 39 and healthy; a nonsmoker with no history of heart problems in her family. But coronary heart disease, the #1 killer of women over 25, doesn't discriminate. Stephanie did everything right. She practiced yoga a few times a week, played volleyball and stocked her kitchen with fresh veggies and fruits, whole grains and soy milk. Hammar-Samuels was diagnosed with coronary artery disease in October 2005. She was scared, but mostly furious.
She exercised, ate healthy and went all these years living a healthy lifestyle, thinking everything was fine. In reality, her left anterior descending artery was 99% blocked. The LAD artery is responsible for supplying the heart's left ventricle, which pumps blood to the rest of the body. Its occlusion often leads to death.
Hammar-Samuels displayed the symptoms of a heart problem - shortness of breath, nausea - but went undiagnosed for two weeks while her doctors ruled out other acid reflux, thyroid problems and potential pregnancy. One doctor diagnosed her with an anxiety disorder. No one mentioned her heart. She started to think she was a hypochondriac. She'd call her friend Betsy Cole five times a day to reassure herself she wasn't crazy.
Cole, a nurse, pushed Hammar-Samuels to take a stress test and pulled a few strings to get her into a friend's cardiology office. During the second part of a treadmill test, Hammar-Samuels' blood pressure dropped and she collapsed. After a coronary catheterization, a procedure that examines the heart's arteries with a catheter, a stent was inserted into her blocked artery to open blood flow. "I wouldn't have guessed my heart, and Betsy did. She really validated that I was not crazy. If it wasn't for her, I don't know what would have happened."
"Women have really good instincts, but we cover them up. We just are more apt to think that we can do more!"
A Nurse's Heart Attack Experience
I am an ER nurse, (day in and day out!) and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard. Please read, pay attention, and send it on!
Diane K. in AZ
FEMALE HEART ATTACKS
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 attack ... 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 completely unexpected 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 thestomach. This was my initial sensation---the only troub le was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
After that had seemed to subside, the next sensation was likelittle 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 puzzlingabout 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 foot rest, 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 nextroom 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 Ithought 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 then laid down on the floor as instructed and lostconsciousness, 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 wa s 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 makemy 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 minutesbefore the call, and both the fire station and St. Judeare only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologistwas already 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 importantin my life to know what I learned first hand.’
1. Be aware that something very different is happeningin 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 theywake up ... which doesn’t happen. My female friends,your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so Iadvise 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 torisk your life guessing what it mig ht be!
2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to driveyourself to the ER -- you’re a hazard to others onthe road and so is your panicked husband who willbe 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 youneed 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 cholesterolelevated 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
