Serious

I don't like to write about serious things, because I am a happy kinda girl, but I have to tell you about something that happened to one of my very favorite people, Sherry. She is my two friends Willow's and Simba's mom and we all do agility together. In fact, Willow and I had a bunch of classes together for a while. Now, we do agility trials together and we have tons of fun running and jumping. Today, mom received an email from from Sherry about an experience she had.

It really worried mom, and she asked Sherry if I could post about it on my blog. Of course, Sherry said that I could...

...

On Thursday I was running Willow and Simba in class. I felt a tightening in my chest, under my arm and up my neck when I ran. When I stopped the pain was all but gone. Not wanting to cause a stir and announce one more physical problem I quietly slipped out after class, loaded my car and drove home. I had called my husband to come to (the training center) and he followed me home. It took 45 minutes for him to get to Pawsitive Partners from his work. We drove South, home away from St Vincent.

When we settled the pups, Rich took my blood pressure. It was really high and we decided we needed to get help. We drove to the Care Center here in Mooresville and they said we need to send you to a Cardiac Hospital after they took some test.By then when I was laying down my chest pain was completely gone. Mind you nothing was conclusive in any of the test and I was thinking, oh no I made a mistake coming here. It took a very long time to get to St Vincent at 15 miles an hour (with a nice ambulance person taking my vitals and not seeing anything to indicate a heart problem). Plus he kept asking how bad my pain was. I didn't have any). The roads were terrible and it was rush hour.

When I told them the attack had started at 1:30 and it was 6:00 before we got to a hospital, they asked why I didn't call 911? At this point I felt really dumb for coming to the hospital anyway, as the test were all just slightly, maybe pointing to a Heart Attack. Now I was feeling even dumber since I made so many wrong decisions, driving home, not calling 911, waiting too long and the list goes on.

I am writing this to you all so you won't make the same mistakes. God granted me this grace period of time to get to the hospital to get help. I am very grateful and will not make this mistake again.

The happy and not so happy end of this account of my Heart Attack is that I had a very, very, very slight attack. This lead to an over night stay and a heart cauterization. They found blockage in 3 places of my heart. The one being 70% and the others 40%. Surgery is not an option at this time but is in my future. As I told Liz (her agility instructor), I hope by then they will have a surgery that can be done from a pin hole

I am to 1.eat right, 2.exercise and 3.take my medication and resume my natural life. But one of the most important things that is not on the list........ but told to me over and over is to listen to my heart. When I ran my heart started to beat harder to squeeze blood to my heart. It was blocked to a narrow opening of only 30% so I had pain. My meds will help and the other things but most of all I have to listen to my heart and Stop when I have pain. Call 911 when and if it doesn't stop.

If you are expecting a Heart Attack to be so painful you can't stand it, it didn't feel that way. I only felt a tightening pain not a sharp pain. I'm sure everyone is different. More women die because they ignored the pain. It can be in your arm, chest, neck , back..... Don't be like me. Call 911. Let your friends help you. They won't think less of you if you only have indigestion, stress related pain or exercise pain. True friends just want you healthy! I was a goof, please don't make the same mistake. The doctor all told me.... "better safe, than sorry"....

Mom and I have stumbled across a bunch articles and television segments regarding women and their lack of understanding how heart attacks affect them differently than men. Heart attacks are a silent killer, as they say. Many women die from heart attacks because they do not know the symptoms. Here is a link you can view for other information regarding women and heart attacks.

I would have been really upset if something happened to Sherry and I couldn't see my pals Willow and Simba. I'm just really happy that everything is going to be OK. I'm going to give her an EXTRA big smooch next time I see her. I don't dole those out to just anyone!



Simba (the puppy) and Willow