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| 69% of women don't know that heart disease is the #1 killer of women. |
It was a football Sunday and my
father sat in his recliner watching television most of the day. I was quietly
knitting away in the same room. Several times I watched him stretch out his
left arm, and rub his bicep and shoulder. I asked him if he hurt his shoulder,
and he replied he didn’t know what happened to it, but he had pain going up his
arm. His feet were propped up, but he put the foot rest down, and calmly stated
he felt a little short of breath.
Alarmed, I extracted Mom from the
kitchen. She was a nurse, so she immediately started the “I think you’re having
a heart attack” talk. Dad pooh-poohed her, and said it was only indigestion.
She was like a bulldog, not letting go of her grip on the subject. He finally
relented, and we bundled him off to the hospital. Within minutes of arrival, he
had a massive heart attack. The doctor told us that if we had been at home when
it struck, he would have died before we could pick up the phone. My dad
survived that, and several other heart events before finally succumbing to
death via heart attack. He was 58 when the first one happened, 62 when the last
one killed him.
Dad was predisposed to begin
with. His own birth father died at the age of 48. My father was gone at 62.
Clearly, we have a history of heart disease in our family.
I have a 30% blockage myself, of
which my doctor reminds me each time I go in for a checkup. I have an aversion
to taking my cholesterol medicine, and he uses my blockage to remind me how
important it is to take the medicine. I’ve had a few scares and stress tests multiple times, and
heart caths several times. He pointed
out last time I was in that President Bill Clinton passed a stress test the
week before his heart attack.
You need to know the likelihood of
your chance for a heart attack. Talk with your doctor to review risk factors
for heart disease and heart symptoms when you’re in for your annual checkup. Don’t
wait for the doctor to ask you. Be
proactive. Get an assessment of your risk factors:
- I have a family history. Do you? Talk with your relatives to get your history.
- I have high cholesterol. How about you?
- I am predisposed to high blood pressure, so I lost weight and began physical exercise to keep it in check. How about you?
- Do you smoke? I quit 25 years ago, and it was the best thing I ever did for myself.
- Are you overweight? Work on getting that under control.
If you have risk factors, work
with your doctor on a plan to reduce or eliminate your risks.
Now I don’t mean to be a doomsday
voice, but I do know that heart disease and heart attacks can sneak up on you.
There’s currently a commercial running on television for Bayer Aspirin that
depicts people receiving warnings that “today” is the day for their heart
attack.
What makes it worse for women is that
although people always talk about warning signs for heart attacks, science now
has proven that the indicators of an impending heart attack are different for
women from the generally accepted symptoms.
In our Boomer Babes survey, 11%
of responders indicated high blood pressure. Less than 2% had actual heard
disease or heart failure. However, here’s the thing about heart disease-you never know when it’s going to happen.
Research by the 1National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that women often experience new or
different physical symptoms as long as a month or more before experiencing
heart attacks.Among the 515 women in the NIH
study, 95-percent said they knew their symptoms were new or different a month
or more before experiencing their 2heart attack,
or 3AcuteMyocardial Infarction (AMI). The symptoms most commonly reported
were unusual fatigue (70.6-percent), sleep disturbance (47.8-percent), and
shortness of breath (42.1-percent).
While researching statistics for this article, I was surprised how many
women bury their heads in the sand regarding heart disease, and how misinformed
they were. If you asked any woman what she thinks she may die from, chances are
she would say cancer. In the poll, 60% of women erroneously listed cancer as
the leading cause of death among women. Deaths from all cancers in the USA are
half as common as death from cardiovascular disease. The truth is that heart
attacks kill 1 in 4 women while breast cancer takes 1 in 16 lives. In fact, only
31% of women know that heart disease is the number one killer of women.
Here’s an interesting statement from my research: 4”On the average, women take 2-4 hours longer than men to respond to symptoms of heartattack, limiting the beneficial use of some newer treatments like clot busters
that work best within the first hour after onset of pain or discomfort. “
Stop and think this over. Are we our own worst enemy? How often do you
as a wife, or a mom, or an employee disregard discomfort or signs of illness?
We may feel fatigued, but we need to get just one more load of laundry done.
You may feel dizzy, but you tell yourself it’s because you haven’t had enough
to eat today. You feel chest pressure, but convince yourself it’s simply
because you’re stressed. In the meantime, mortality may be knocking on your
door, but you’re trying to tell it no one is home. Our “keep going” attitude
literally can be the death of us. Being a warrior woman is admirable, but you
need to put your wise woman ahead of your warrior woman.
Here’s one of the most important lessons I have learned about
responding to heart attack symptoms. Take an aspirin and call an ambulance! Do not attempt to drive
yourself to the hospital, or ask a friend or spouse to take you. If you go into
full cardiac arrest in route; during an event like that, your driver will be of
no use to you, and in fact will probably panic and may create a traffic
accident. Don’t worry about being embarrassed if it’s a false alarm. Better
safe than sorry. Your doctor or any EMT will tell you this same thing.
Here are some of the symptoms most often experienced by women:
- Indigestion or gas-like pain
- Dizziness, nausea or vomiting
- Unexplained weakness, fatigue
- Discomfort/pain between shoulder blades
- Recurring chest discomfort
- Sense of impending doom
Love yourself first. On
this weekend of love, show the ones dearest to you how much you love yourself
by learning all you can about heart disease in women. Know the symptoms and
have a response strategy ready.
No one ever plans to
have a heart attack, and there is no dress rehearsal for death. Take care of
yourself first so that you can take care of other.
I wish you a happy
Valentine’s Day and many more to come.
Do you know someone that will benefit from this information?
Please forward or share to them.
For more information,
here are related links:
My friend Judy Dye sent me this and I am posting it on her behalf:
ReplyDeleteWith Every Beat of My Heart by Judy Dye
I come from generations of woman with ticky hearts. Both my mother and I have pacemakers and arrhythmia. I call my irregular heartbeat, my calypso heart. The drum beat, regular rhythm, glub-bub, glub-bub, that most folks have, sounds more like glub-a-dee-glub-bub-bub…pause…wait-for-it...glub-lub.
My mother’s mother had a ticky heart since she was a kid. She would faint at the drop of a hat. What I’ve learned about ticky hearts is that having one does not mean easy living or slowed down lives. My mother, Evadene, has ticky heart and is 92. We’re lucky if we can keep her from climbing a ladder to clean out her own eaves or hang her own curtains.
Her mother, Maggie, was crossing the street between a Ford Pick-up truck and a car, the truck went out of gear, rolled back and crushed her legs. She was 80 years-old and both legs had to be amputated above the knee. We thought, given her heart, that that would be the end of her. Nope, she lived another eight years. Of course, it was not the life she and Grandpa had planned, not at all, never-the-less, live she did.
The main concern about arrhythmia is that with an irregular heartbeat there is a chance of blood accumulating around the heart and one throwing a clot. To mitigate that possibility, I take blood thinners. I hate it. It’s like taking a lick of rat poison every morning, you bruise like a ripe peach and pin prick can ruin a sewing project, but neither do I want to stroke out.
The real concern then is stroke. It is important for each woman to know the signs that she may be having a stroke:
1. Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
2. Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
3. Sudden trouble seeing or blurred vision in one or both eyes
4. Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
5. Sudden severe headache with no known cause
For friends and family, they need to know how to spot a stroke: Remember F.A.S.T. Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911. Speed to medical assistance is of ultimate importance. Recovery ability is directly correlated to the time between stroke and medical assistance.
We all know that a healthy life style of good diet, regular exercise and stress-less living may extend our life span and may trump genes but there is no medical chart that shows the number of heartbreaks a woman has had in her lifetime. There is no x-ray that can show the scars on the heart that life has placed there. To live and to love is to know heartbreak. Perhaps it is in the breaking, healing and scaring that our hearts become both tougher and more tender; tougher in facing other heartbreaks, yet, more tender in compassion for the aches of others. I certainly don’t follow the healthiest lifestyle but I truly think that this duality is what has kept my heart beating all these 75 years, tough and tender.
Meanwhile, my ticky heart is beating a happy little calypso song. Maybe because it’s winter and I my heart is yearning for warm, sun, beach, sand, margaritas, glub-ta-dee-day-o-day-o-day O!
Been heart diseases just like been through hell; well
ReplyDeletespecial thanks to God almighty for using DR.OMOYE the greatest spell
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what happened he congratulated me. I promise to tell the world about him.
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