Health Top Story

I looked up at her, struggling to understand what happened. Her mouth moved, but I could not hear. . . the noise was loud. . . so loud. She was pretty, with blond hair pulled loosely from her face. I could see directly into her eyes which were clouded with concern. She lifted my head high, cool hands touch. . . bent to meet me, and spoke directly into my ear. “You will to be in order. I will put these headphones on you now to muffle the sound. … You are in a helicopter to stay with us …” I felt then, as we the crowd were lifted up into the sky. This is the last thing I remember before my world turned to black.

It has been three years and I’m still here! In memory of that Saturday morning will continue to be enthusiastic. My symptoms were in no way sent warning signals of an impending heart attack. I was just tired. . . ! I had worked a lot, so it was perfectly explicable fatigue. My arms hurt a bit, but again, is explained, and nothing a nice hot shower could not cure.

I am an interior designer and furniture had been installed in a model home this week, so my “symptoms” all makes perfect sense. They made perfect sense to me, that is, until about 04.00 clock, Saturday morning when I woke up from a deep sleep for no apparent reason. Within minutes I felt sick, short of breath and sweating heavily. I knew I was into it. . . I thought I did not know what was “it”! I was young, healthy, never had pain in the chest, jaw or neck pain, pain shooting down my left arm. . . even still, I knew I was in big trouble, as you call 911 kinds of trouble. It all happened so fast. Seemingly without warning, I had entered into a world of terms and conditions that were unfamiliar to me. Terms such as LAD and RCA, angioplasty, septic shock and stents. . . Words that I knew existed, but for someone else. Certainly not for me.

Because the life of the biggest changes to give us a little warning, I was unprepared to learn how to react. In the days and months that followed, I experienced a lot of emotions. I felt grateful. . . God for answering the multitude of “Beggy” prayers, which had offered to my name. . . To my supervisors, whose compassion and give the heart were like a gift. . . To say my “never-uncle” family and friends, the vigil by my bed for days instead, would not give up on me. Yes. . . thankful, anxious, hopeful, do not want answers, missing answers. . . often engulfed in waves of anxiety and fear. Thankfully, I seemed to hit the quota, but angry that I now included in a statistical bench I have never asked to be a part of the first in line!

Although I did not realize at the time, the roller coaster ride of emotions I was experiencing had been widespread. My life had been interrupted, deprived of my innocence away, I was forced to suddenly face to face with my own mortality in the face. . . and mourn the loss of my health!

I am aware that I was not the only change of a life lived entirely unexpected event in their lives. . . if it is that it through, right or wrong, makes you feel very alone. In reality, my heart attack not only me, but concerned family and friends alike. They too were traumatized. Each of us had to find our own way, in our own time, which would take us to a place of understanding and acceptance of what happened!

I completed a cardiac rehabilitation and received a bright red T-shirt to the world, announced that yes, I stayed the course. On most days, pen in hand, I changed my innermost thoughts in my red leather journal. I poured on these pages my feelings of gratitude with fears and frustrations, all the time weeping prayed that I was not before the destruction of the evidence that I die shown as naked. I searched unsuccessfully for articles from people who had been through a similar experience to me. . . Search for assurances that I will be able to regain my life would be that the feelings I experienced were normal, and that no. . . I was not crazy. I was on an eternal search responses. As a “survivor” I wanted to know why I still here? What was my goal?

I once read that if we need it most, the grace of God comes to us like little bites come in torn tissue. In March 2005, nine months after my heart attack, it was splashed on the front page of newspapers around the world, the controversial details of the Terri Schindler-Schaivo case. They were all the same question. Should they or should not, remove life-sustaining feeding tube. The Schindler family had been locked in a decade plus long legal battle with her son-in-law on the care and custody of her then 41-year-old daughter. Terri had suffered massive brain damage when she suddenly, the young age of 26 who broke out with her at home, which was as a mysterious heart and respiratory failure for which no cause has been determined in the described. She was not alive, she was not brain dead, but she was in a severe vegetative state from which, according to most doctors, they would not recover more than likely. Opinion polls have been taken. Individuals and special interest groups and religious organizations were involved, demanding that their voices are heard. It is the number one topic around water coolers appeared in this country and elsewhere. Conservatives and liberals alike were passionate in a committed, unwavering positions.

I was swaying back and forth between the parents views and the husbands position. That is, until I read what turned out later, for me, life changing words from a newspaper interview with Rick Warren, author of the book happened, “The Purpose Driven Life ‘. When asked his opinion on the case of Terri Schiavo Rick Warren replied without hesitation. “The answer for me is clear,” he said. “I am firmly against the removal of the tube. God has given each of us here for a purpose, and that includes Terri Schiavo. We may never know or understand what is their goal, but it has one. We all do. We are all necessary pieces of very great mystery of God come together in order to complete his plan. It’s not about us … it is about him. “

The March day was life-changing for me. After so much searching I felt I finally had the answer I was looking for found. It was all right if I do not want my special purpose was in life, or as my ‘pieces fit’ after all in God’s entire puzzle. The self-inflicted burden of responsibility I had was suddenly move around so long is repealed. What a tremendous feeling of relief!

It produces over two years since I had happened on this interview. Since then I have continued to progress in regaining control make about my life, no longer feel like a victim. I mean heart attack as “a very significant event in my life,” but not allow the “Main Event will be.”

Do I have the luxury of believing that a headache just a headache? The muscle pain, nausea and fatigue are just that, nothing more? Unfortunately, no. . . and the reality is that I probably never again. But today I am happy, healthy and wants to keep a lot smarter than I was three years ago. Many of the things I had once were important are not. . . and vice versa. I do not forget the people I love tell that I love her, and I remember God for each new day to thank. I have learned how not say, ‘Yes, if I want to say no, and I burn the designer candles and drinks from the good crystal whenever I want! These are all advantages that I have forgiven myself by the age and the sum of my experiences. . . all of them.

The issues surrounding women with heart disease is very real Sobering statistics show that one in three women will die from cardiovascular disease. Because its symptoms present so different, and so often remain undetected, more women will die of heart problems, combined than the next seven leading causes of death. I, like so many other women had heard these statistics in the past, but apparently had never heard “them!

Thankfully, have made great progress and many successes, which was recently published by the American Heart Association in an effort to significantly reduce disablity and death from cardiovascular disease made. Our legislative leaders, most of which have not personally affected by this problem. . . either by a wife, mother, sister, daughter or friend. . . stand together now and agree that heart disease have research, prevention and treatment for women must be a top priority!