Women & Heart Disease

[Tubby & Peanut's Mom]

Sasha the Cat's sister recently died of a heart attack. As I was responding to her, I started in on a whole post about heart disease in women - one of my pet...projects I guess you'd call it. I decided to start a new thread to not take away from her grief, so here goes.

Almost 10 years ago now my mother had a heart attack. Thankfully she survived it - and the....whatever you call 5...bypass surgery and has been doing great ever since. But the biggest thing it did was open my eyes to the fact that heart disease is the biggest killer of women.

If you ask women what disease they fear the most, the biggest percentage of them will say breast cancer. When in fact, many, many more of them will be affected by, and die from, heart disease.

And you can't say, well, I'm healthy, I exercise, eat right and my cholesterol is low, because that describes my mother exactly. I believe the fact that she walks 5 miles evey morning greatly contributed to her survival. There was absolutely no indication - at least that we knew of. She said she had felt similar a few times after her walk, but usually laid down and the feeling passed. This time, however, the feeling didn't pass and she ended up in the hospital having bypass surgery.

So I guess the point of this post is, please, all women out there, and even all the young girls, be concious that heart disease is not a "man's disease" and it can and will affect you somehow, someway someday. Have your cholesterol checked, and there are now other tests that can indicate early stages of heart disease. Talk to your doctor about them, even if you feel you are not at risk.

I now know that I'm at great risk. Not only because of my mother's heart attack, but because my father had one also, and my grandfather at 3 of them and my great uncle died of one...and it goes on.

Please, not to dimish the seriousness of breast cancer, but please, broaden your minds to the other diseases that so affect women.