How to mend a Broken Heart

I can take no credit for this entry it was written by my sister Marie last month..............

I’m at a hospital in northern Colorado today. It’s not really where I want to be, but someone I love is having heart surgery today and I need to be here because it’s what families do. My sisters and I are here together, waiting on our mom. She’s having one heart valve replaced and another repaired.

It’s a scary thing. It’s something we’ve always known was a possibility. A big possibility. We don’t come from a family with healthy hearts. Apparently, we don’t come from a family with great immune systems either. Strep infections like us–a lot. My mom had rheumatic fever when she was a child. So did her brothers and sisters. Rheumatic fever isn’t good for your heart. It definitely wasn’t good for theirs. It left them all with heart damage. One of her sisters had two heart attacks before she was 30. All of her siblings have had heart attacks, though thankfully, she hasn’t.

So, there it is, the day after Valentine’s Day and we’re waiting for some amazing surgeons to fix Mom’s broken heart.  I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot about heart disease over the last few months. I thought I knew a lot, having grown up with all of this, but I really didn’t.

I learned that one out of every three deaths in this country is due to heart disease. That’s more than anything else–cancer, aids, car accidents–anything. We’re getting better at treating or fighting it or preventing it, because those numbers are lower than they used to be. But they’re still way too high. The American Heart Association estimates that 81,000,000 Americans have heart disease and this year 1.26 million of us will have a heart attack. That’s a lot. That’s too many.

I also learned that it’s really not fun to have heart disease. You can’t do things you want to do. You get tired really easily. Even eating can seem like too much work. You get fussed over and worried about a lot and when you’re a really independent and active person, it can all be beyond frustrating.

I can’t change those numbers, but I can change mine. Thankfully, other than heredity, I don’t have a lot of risk factors. My blood pressure is low, I don’t smoke and while I’m not as fit as I’d like to be, I’m not overweight either. The heredity factor definitely skews things. I had strep about a zillion times growing up. Actually, I had chronic strep and I feel like I spent most of my childhood taking penicillin. So I know that I need to work even harder to lower my risks.

Thankfully, there’s a website that has a ton of incredibly helpful, useful and even inspirational information. Learn about risk factors, learn how to know if you’re having a heart attack–do you know the signs? Find them here.

There is even more information to help you prevent heart disease by getting healthier. Once I am done with today, I will be making plans to complete Go Red’s “Better U” program and hopefully lower my risk factors (and maybe my waistline) even more.

You’re never too young and you’re never too old to take care of yourself. Go visit Go Red today and share it with every woman you know.

And go call your own mom and tell her you don’t want her to ever have to have a broken heart.