#HeartMonth
Daniele Wiseman
Senior Consultant - Afiniti LLP Consultants | Passionate about Making Change Stick
Another post for #HeartMonth, and probably more important than marking the anniversary of my own experience. (last article 1w ago)
The point I make to all the women I meet (at some point, maybe over a drink), is that a heart attack looks very different in a woman to a man. We share many symptoms or signs of a heart attack with men but we won’t necessarily clutch our chests and fall to our knees, and each person is different. I had a mild heart attack in November 2019, a warning shot across the bows following a year of ‘not being right’. This is how it went:
Previous months, a very busy year with regular work travel and commitments outside of work including Deputy Count Commissioner of Greater Manchester West Scout County which gave me a great sense of achievement and got me outdoors. I have a daughter in her first year at university and another just started a new school. I had extended family, a social life, a dog, a cat and being a night owl, rarely went to bed before 1am. I suffered with headaches, often felt tired and my glasses prescription had to be adjusted twice in that year. This was attributed I headed down to Cambridge to an Institute of Management event, stayed with my sister the night before and drove to Cambridge from Bedford the next morning.
After lunch I felt nauseous and rather warm. I was struggling to continue with what I was saying as I stood in a poster session. My throat felt tight and as I felt nauseaus I thought I must have eaten something with dairy in it at lunchtime (I’m lactose intolerant). I went to the Ladies feeling quite unwell and absolutely unable to stay on my feet, as if all my muscles had gone weak. I sat on the floor by the toilet for a while, expecting to be sick. I didn’t want to approach anyone, to make a fuss, so I left to sit in my car, and then, clearly not thinking straight, I decided to drive to a petrol station to buy a bottle of water and then see if I wanted to head home. I was uncomfortable driving, my throat felt constricted. I found myself driving through endless roadworks, completely lost, slumping further into the driver’s seat, with a heaviness in my chest, tightness at my throat and pain in my right (yes, right) arm. By the time I pulled into a lane I felt pretty out of it but still didn’t want to make a big deal of it so I called 111 but they put me through to the emergency services and 40 minutes later I was in an ambulance having an ECG. My heart rate was a little high, my blood pressure elevated but the ECG was basically fine. It wasn’t until I had a cardiac MRI that they confirmed the scarring on my heart showing that I had indeed had a heart attack.
Ladies, we tend to not want to make a fuss or we put pretty much any symptom down to the peri-menopause/menopause or to just being run down, which is why a heart attack is a potentially deadly prompt, and if you survive it, you need to find out what’s wrong. But before then if you go to the doctor, remember he/she has to see past the peri-menopausal/menopausal you, and any anxiety or existing conditions to even think heart disease. The doctor I spoke to after the ambulance came out to me dismissed my experience as a panic attack. My own GP made the referral for the Cardiac MRI from where I was sent for an angiogram to explore my arteries. My blockages were severe, a widowmaker, and 95-100% blockages. At 49, a quadruple heart bypass was unexpected, there was no significant family history (my Dad had a heart attack and a stent fitted in his 60’s) but at this point in our lives there are so many ‘false flags’ attributed to menopause or anxiety it wasn't immediately obvious, not like we see whan a man has a heart attack in a film and he clutches his chest. There are a couple of great books I have read since my operation which I’d like to recommend:
领英推荐
Invisible Woman, Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado-Perez
A Woman’s Heart, Why Female Heart Health Really Matters, by Professor Angela Mass, World Renowned Expert in Female Cardiology
There are lots of changes in our bodies as we age but my last contribution to #HeartMonth is ‘Trust yourself. Speak up. And ‘Be heart healthy’, as the British Heart Foundation says!’