Sharing Hope

I Found Myself Living in an Episode of “The Pitt”

Today is the last day of February and the last day of Heart Health Awareness Month, so I wanted to share a little story with you all. It’s one that I want to make sure all my female family & friends pay attention to and guys please share with the women in your life. This is very long but I know if someone finds it helpful, it’s worth writing!

On April 4^th of last year, just 8 hours after watching the season finale of The Pitt, I found myself feeling like I was living in an episode through the ER at Inspira Mullica Hill, NJ. It started the Saturday before, March 29^th with what felt like a pulled muscle in the back of my upper left arm. It felt no different than when I pulled a muscle in my right arm previously. I worked out regularly and I had just turned 57 eleven days earlier, so I am used to having achy muscles and occasional injuries from trying to stay healthy. I did what I always do when this happens, I put a heat pack on it and the pain went away. So, I thought nothing of it the rest of the day.

The next day I woke up and it was sore again, I figured I slept on it wrong, since it was feeling injured the day before I thought I should take it easy and skip my workout for a couple of days to rest my sore muscles. Again, a heat pack took away the pain. This went on each day, by Tuesday my husband Marc asked, “do you have any chest pain?” I said no, I have no chest pain, no heaviness in my chest and no trouble breathing or catching my breath. Plus, a heat pack takes the pain away, if it was anything serious like a heart attack, I can’t imagine a heat pack would fix it! Wednesday, I had no pain at all, I felt great and did a full work out in total for an hour and 20 minutes, my workout routine that day included strength, core, rowing, stretching all through Peloton and a hard-core cardio workout for the last 20 minutes with a DVD I had just bought and had really been enjoying for a couple of weeks now. Thursday the pain was back, still the heat pack worked again to make it go away.

While trying to fall asleep Thursday night, for the first time I felt a slight heaviness in my chest. Still nothing that felt alarming, I really didn’t want to go to the ER for nothing as the last time I went there, we waited 7 hours, they had done an EKG and bloodwork quickly, but then we were never taken back to see a Dr. We ended up leaving in the middle of the night and found out later it was just low sodium. I really didn’t want to sit in the ER for another 7 hours to find out it was just a pulled muscle. In the end we decided to go to the ER that Friday morning, just to be cautious. I had congestive heart failure back in 2013 from pneumonia that wouldn’t go away for 3 months, it was bad and I was in the cardiac care unit of the hospital for 9 days being told I’d need a heart transplant to survive long term. In the end, my heart healed 100% within 7 months, and the doctors used the word “miracle” saying they had never seen anything like it and there was no medical explanation for how it happened. (not the first time I’d heard the word “miracle” when it came to my surviving things over the years) Back with that illness I felt horrible, I had trouble breathing and couldn’t take a deep breath or walk across the room without being winded. This time I felt nothing horrible like that, I felt considerably good, except for my arm, I thought it couldn’t possibly be my heart.

When we got to the ER I walked in, surprisingly it was the emptiest I’d ever seen it. I told them I had pain in my arm off and on since last Saturday, but heat packs made it go away and I had no chest pain, but a little heaviness when I was trying to go to sleep the night before, so I thought I better just come in & get it checked out. They took me back for an EKG right away, like they had before when I had gone there, but this time as soon as they looked at the screen they calmly told me to sit up and then brought in a wheelchair and told me to get in it. I did and they asked who I was there with, I said my husband. As we walked through the ER to go back, they called out for Marc to join us. They whisked me back to this room, on the way handing my purse & possessions to my worried and confused husband walking along side of us, while they were also simultaneously undressing me before they’ve even told us what they’re doing.

We arrived at a room where it seemed like a dozen nurses and doctors were running around prepping for a doomsday scenario, like we just watched on the finale of The Pitt the night before. Now I was in an episode of it, no doubt. They told me I was having a massive heart attack, asked when the arm pain first started. I said last Saturday, they said that’s when my heart attack started. I was in total shock!! No chest pain, no headaches even and no trouble breathing, but I had been having a heart attack for over 6 days now and never knew it! All that week I felt fine, we ate dinner as usual each night, we watched tv after dinner, I drove to the store, I drove to get my allergy shots and did all the normal things I do in a week. Then they told me they were going to put in a stent, as they were sure I had a blockage, but they also told me that there wasn’t time to put me under so I would be awake for the whole procedure. Whaaaat????!!!

As I was lying there, still in shock, I watched on a screen while they inserted what looked like a long wire to place the stent up by my pumping heart, while at the same time my life flashed before my eyes. I always wondered if that really happened to people and what it was like, now I know and I do NOT recommend it. For the first time in my life, I was truly very scared, more so than I had ever remembered being before. More than with my brain tumor 35 years ago (I honestly felt it wasn’t my time then, even when my doctor emphatically told me it likely was my time to die), more than with heart failure 12 years earlier or with breast cancer 3 years earlier. I hadn’t been even close to this scared before, except I believe when I had life threatening seizures during my pregnancy with our daughter 32 years ago (I would blackout & stop breathing during them almost daily for the last 6 months of the pregnancy, they told Marc eventually I might not wake up after one of them, so that was a scary time for all of us). Yet, at this moment I felt this scared the shit out of me even more than that did and the thought I could die right then & there, on the spot, is something I had not faced in many years.

Obviously, I survived, luckily it’s become “my thing” over the years. My friends have called me a cat for a long time now, joking that I must have 9 lives. I hope they are right, as I think we’re down the last 2 at this point! After the procedure they told me that I had a 100% and a 95% blockage, and I had a blood clot in my heart (I’ll be staying on 2 blood thinners for a long time due to that, even though it appears the clot is finally gone, they’re afraid it will come back if I stop taking them). The doctors and nurses don’t know how I walked in there that day, let alone how I worked out two days prior. I asked why I didn’t drop dead while working out, one nurse said “Luck”, a couple of doctors pretty much said the same thing, and most have been shocked when they hear my story. They don’t know how I walked in there, how I worked out, lived a week like that other than I was lucky, yet again. I learned from this that most women do not have any chest pain when initially having a heart attack. Some, like me, don’t have trouble breathing or any other symptoms than maybe some pain in their arm, like I had.

About 4 days after I had arrived I was discharged with a Life Vest defibrillator that I had to wear 24/7 until my heart function got stronger. That happened in June, but then we took a step backwards in the beginning of September and I got the Life Vest back until mid-October. In early October I switched cardiology teams and moved over to Main Line Health and the Lankenau Heart Group over in PA, they have been spectacular, more informative and attentive, things have moved faster for me getting better once we were in their care. It’s been a very bumpy road since last April and at times we’ve had some scary days and weeks, which is why I hesitated to share anything about this yet. Only the friends and family I’ve seen over the last 10 months have really known.

I do have high cholesterol, since I was 20 years old, skinny and 85 pounds my cholesterol was that of “an overweight man in his late 40’s who eats steak and eggs every day”. I still don’t eat steak or eggs; I ate mostly chicken back then and had almost no body fat. Back when I had the CHF in 2013 I had a catheterization done and it showed I had zero blockages and zero thickening of my arteries, they actually said to me “there isn’t enough time left in your life for blockages to be what kills you”, I was 45 at the time and my cholesterol was still high but with my lifelong stomach issues I could never tolerate statins. Since we were told I had zero blockages and my cholesterol was likely hereditary, as low fat diets did not move the number at all, we didn’t worry about it and only worked on healing my heart through cardiac rehab and medication. I tried that this time too, it did not work as well and I had to stop and start the rehab often, due to now knowing I need statins and trying to find one that I can tolerate. I spent a lot of time ill since May, trying so many statins, still haven’t been able to tolerate any. I am currently on Vascepa, a prescription fish oil and we hope that helps my triglycerides along with a low carb diet. (my favorite foods are pasta, bread and potatoes so this is a real challenge) I will try to add another statin in the next month, the doctor wanted to give my body a break for a month or so, which I really appreciate. As for the first time since last spring we have been out and about more, including out to dinner with family, which is so nice.

Another thing I wanted to add, is that I’ve read recently that women who have a higher number of calcium deposits on their mammograms should get a thorough check up by a cardiologist, as it could mean they have plaque buildup or blockages that may need attention. I was having mammograms and ultrasounds done every 6 months for the 3 years before this heart attack happened, since I had breast cancer diagnosed the week of Christmas 2021. Surgery and radiation followed beginning in February of 2022 and I was cancer free. I wish they had recommended to me a few years earlier to check for blockages, as they always remarked on the high number of calcium deposits in my scans, but no one ever said that could mean something is going on with my heart health. I have religiously seen my cardiologist every 6 months since my heart failure in 2013. I had a stress test and echocardiogram done at the end of June, less than a year before this event and it was normal. My heart function was in the 60’s. My cardiologist retired the week I had those tests done, that’s why I wanted them done once more before he left. I saw the replacement dr. in November but wasn’t crazy about him, so I had planned to look for a new one in May for my next 6 month checkup. I only wish I had gotten a calcium score test done, as that most likely would have shown I was in trouble in advance. I thought I was doing everything right. I eat better, I quit smoking the week our granddaughter was born in August 2022, I exercise 4 times a week since 2019, I do transcendental meditation at least 20 minutes every morning and I get a minimum of 7-8 hours sleep most nights, I hardly recognize myself by this description of my activities as it’s very different than the first 50 years of my life. Still this apparently wasn’t enough.

I know this was super long, but I do hope if anyone reads this and hears something in it that sounds familiar to them, makes them question something they’ve been feeling or is something they experience in the future they’ll check it out immediately. Like, having a number of calcium deposits show up in their mammograms or having pain in their left arm, particularly in the back of your left arm that they will go get these things checked out, hope they are nothing, but better to know for sure than to let it go! Please learn from my mistakes!

I’ll add in closing this out that when my life flashed before my eyes I saw many more people than I would have ever expected to, one more reason that I was scared that it might be over right then. It left me wanting to reach out to many old friends, the ones I lost contact with over the years when life got busy and more complicated at times. I hope I can reconnect with some of them over this new and hopefully much better year!