Young women get heart attacks, too

On April 21, I received a call that my very good friend Millicent had just had a heart attack, driving to work on a freeway in south Minneapolis. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! She is in her early forties, in shape, and eats right! I knew heart disease is a serious health risk for women, but I just didn't think someone so young and healthy could get one. I was very wrong. Here are some sobering facts about women and heart attacks:

• 435,000 American women have heart attacks annually; 83,000 are under age 65; 35,000 are under 55. 
• 42% of women who have heart attacks die within 1 year, compared to 24% of men.
• Under age 50, women’s heart attacks are twice as likely as men’s to be fatal.
• 267,000 women die each year from heart attacks, which kill six times as many women as breast cancer. Another 31, 837 women die each year of congestive heart failure, representing 62.6% of all heart failure deaths.

The full fact sheet can be found here.

The wonderful news is that Millicent survived her heart attack and is doing fine. I asked her if she would write about her experience to educate women about needing to know the symptoms of a heart attack (they are different than the symptoms for men), and ways we can all make lifestyle changes to reduce our risk of having one.

Millicent agreed and here is her post:

~~~~

My heart attack was nothing like I thought it would be. No “I’m coming to see you, Elizabeth!” like Fred Sanford used to say. No lightning bolt of pain in my chest that made me fall instantly unconscious. No numb left arm or tingly fingers (until much later).

My heart attack was a gradual increase of pressure and pain that was unlike anything I ever felt before. Sort of like a strong, painful strumming in my chest. Think of the vibration a guitar string makes when you pluck it. That vibration is the sound you hear. I felt one long, painful, pressurized note that got progressively louder (more painful) as the seconds ticked by. It felt like a deep, strong vibration.

Toward the end, when I decided to call 911, is when the fear set in. I’m only 44, I’m pretty fit, is this really a heart attack? Am I going to die today?

FEAR is what made me call 911.

And FEAR is what saved my life.

If I hadn’t been afraid of dying too early of some ailment or disease, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to the symptoms of HEART ATTACK and STROKE for women. If I wasn’t afraid of getting stiff and out of shape in old age, I wouldn’t have tried to keep myself in reasonably decent shape all these years. And if I wasn’t afraid of passing out and having a wreck on the highway, I would not have pulled over when I did and called 911 for myself.

We women have to start being afraid again.

Be afraid to get out of shape!

Be afraid to die of some horrible disease!

Be afraid to become old and feeble.

These things are NOT INEVITABLE!

Please.

Eat LESS SALT! Our heart, kidneys, brain and liver can’t take it.

Eat LESS FAT! Our bodies aren’t made to carry it all.

Get more EXERCISE! Our bodies fall apart without it.

We can only take care of ourselves; no one else can do it for us.

I’m still afraid.

Are you with me??

~~~~

Related links:

Symptoms of a heart attack in women

Things women can do to reduce their risk of a heart attack.

Queer Voices: A Reading of GLBT Writers & Friends --April 22

Sherry Quan Lee, Ann Freeman, Lori Young-Williams

 
I've never doing a reading from my blog before so this is exciting!

Intermedia Arts in partnership with Hamline University 

presents 

Queer Voices: A Reading of GLBT Writers & Friends 

hosted by curators Andrea Jenkins and John Medeiros 

Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

Hamline University
1536 Hewitt Avenue
Giddens Learning Center, 100E
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104

LORI YOUNG-WILLIAMS is a prose poet born in St. Paul. She comes from a working class family that believes in laughter, crying, and praying when times are good, bad or otherwise. She received her degree in Human Relationships with an emphasis in family relationships from the University of Minnesota, and works a 9-5 job in Human Resources and Finance, though her passion is her writing. Most of her poetry is about her family—family relationships and how they impact her life. She has been published in Interrace magazine, the Turtle River Press, the National Library of Poetry, Quill Books, Dust & Fire. She has self-published two chapbooks, and has read in various bookstores, coffee shops, and spoken word events throughout the Twin Cities. Lori recently was accepted as a participant for the Givens Black Writers Retreat, with Sonja Sanchez and Carolyn Holbrook.

ANN FREEMAN is an artist, writer, connector, wannabe DJ, mother, grandmother, queer girl, whitegirl in an otherwise brown family, and still dancing after all these years. She is an infrequent yet enthusiastic performer in the Twin Cities art scene. She will be reading from her blog, Embrace Your Age ‘Cause You Livin’! Ann is an interloper in tonight's reading. She is totally queer, once thought she was straight, but has never been narrow.

SHERRY QUAN LEE, author of Chinese Blackbird, 2002 (“an underground favorite”), and How to Write a Suicide Note, 2008, approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic. Currently she is the Program Associate for the Split Rock Arts Program summer workshops and the Online Mentoring for Writers Program at the University of Minnesota where she also earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Recently retired from ten years of teaching Creative Writing at Metropolitan State University, Sherry Quan Lee continues to mentor and teach community writing workshops. She was a first year participant of Cave Canem, a writing retreat for Black poets, and previously curated cabaret performances and edited journal anthologies for the Asian American Renaissance.

For more information, call 651-523-2047

The GLBT Reading Series, presented by Intermedia Arts and Hamline University, celebrates the rich diversity of queer voices that make up the Twin Cities community of writers, readers, and their audiences, offering public readings by both emerging and established local writers and poets.

Latecomer blogger -- let me introduce myself

Welcome to my brand new blog! Let me introduce myself. I am a 52 year old artist, connector and wannabe DJ. I am also a mother and grandmother and queer girl extraordinaire. Got legally married to my handsome wuzband in MA 2 1/2 years ago. I am the white girl in a brown family and a mostly brown community of friends. So my life crosses a lot of interesting intersections. I am going to blog about those intersections and more.

For example, I will surely be blogging about what it's like to be a whitegirl in my world, some of the things I've learned along the way, and how the world looks through the lens of my specific eyes -- which are near sighted, far sighted, and full of astigmatism -- so it's sometimes an interesting worldview.

I will likely blog about what it means for me that our new president is biracial, and was raised by a white mother and white grandparents given that I raised two biracial kids. I could say a lot about that. A lot. But not now, later. This is my intro blog.

I am very interested in blogging about getting older. That could be the topic of most of my blogs. I did not realize I was passing out of regular adulthood into older adulthood until I was almost 50. Seriously. I was still a regular club goer and general merry maker. I had no idea I was shifting into the young side of the golden years until I realized most of the people in the clubs were the age of my kids -- until I ran into my actual kids in the clubs. I'm just sayin. I was shocked into reality.

So aging has become a subject of endless fascination for me as I really have no idea what it means to be getting older but I do know I am extremely happy to be alive, having survived a lot so far. Aging thought for the day: Billions in advertising dollars are spent each year to tell women how to look younger. What if those same dollars went into telling us how to live better?

Oh, and I stay up on world events and feel compelled to opine from time to time. My favorite TV show ever is "The Wire." That's the kind of stuff you might find me blogging about here. Politics. Race relations. The media. Poverty. Prison reform. Father's rights. The needs of undocumented people. You know, light fluffy stuff.

I love music and am an armchair critic. So I'll tell you what I think about a musician, a concert, or an album now and then. Artist recommendation of the day: Ruthie Foster. Favorite song: Up Above My Head (there is music in the air).

Since I am an artist of sorts, you never know when a poem or piece of creative nonfiction might get posted here as well.

So an anything goes blog. We'll see how it goes!

Let me end this introduction by saying I try to live by this African proverb: Don't look at your feet to see if you're doing it right. Just dance!

And remember, embrace your age cause you livin'!

Welcome! I invite your comments!