Cardiovascular Disease in Women

• Approximately 144 million women live in the United States.
• More than 8 million of those 144 million women are living with heart disease.
• Of that group of 8 million women,
• 500,000 women will die from heart disease this year.
• One woman every minute. Take a minute to think about that. These are harsh facts.
• Cardiovascular disease is the number-one killer of women.

I’m in the office, my favorite room, with dinner already prepared for my husband of 29 years. It’s quiet except for the most welcomed interruptions: my oldest daughter’s phone calls describing my grandchildren’s most recent accomplishments, my middle daughter’s emails about her baby on the way, and my youngest daughter’s adventures with substitute teaching.

I feel a slight pain in my upper back—probably due to sitting too long at the computer—but it’s much harder for me to dismiss such pains than it used to be. It’s still difficult for me to comprehend that I have coronary artery disease, and that a stent in my left descending artery is keeping me alive.

A two-time survivor of life-threatening disease, and a woman who has lived through bankruptcy—not only financially but physically, psychologically, and spiritually—I know what it is to be bankrupt in every way. I have risen above these circumstances; my passion now is to give other women the courage to do the same.

I have been a physically fit, successful, positive, driven young woman. I have been a speaker on women’s issues for the past 20 years. The willingness to show who I am has allowed me the opportunity to speak to women all over the United States, to meet with Muhammad Ali, the Prime Minister of Israel, President Reagan, and prominent ministers and civic leaders.

This book is a personal journey of being diagnosed with heart disease as a young woman—and learning to live with it. I offer practical steps to guide the reader to become healthier physically, psychologically, and spiritually. I examine the reasons why heart disease is the number-one killer of American women. Unfortunately, it is more than just a matter of plaque in our arteries.

Since 1908 the leading cause of death among American women has been heart disease. Since 1985 more women than men have died from heart disease. Two decades! Are we too busy, after fighting for justice in the workplace, to care for our hearts? Are we too exhausted to fight for our equality within the medical community? Women’s lib certainly has come a long way, but since its advent we have been dying at a higher rate than men from heart disease.

I am a volunteer spokesperson for the American Heart Association. However, I didn’t wait for permission to share with women about their risks of heart disease. I couldn’t wait. I don’t know how to wait. I wish I did. I wish I could learn to knit, enjoy reading novels, and drink tea with my girlfriends. Instead, I live with the need to communicate everything that I experienced during my grueling, miserably alone heart ordeal.

Each time I speak, I find that most women are stunned by what I have to say, and eager to see research that backs up the shocking news that heart disease, not breast cancer, is the number-one killer of American women,.

Who knew? And yet women die from heart disease six times more than from breast cancer. Twice as many women die from heart disease as from all cancers put together! More women than men die of heart disease each year. But women receive only:

• 33% of the angioplasties, stents, and bypass surgeries that are performed;

• 28% of implantable defibrillators; and

• 36% of open-heart surgeries.

And women comprise only 25% of participants in all heart-related research studies (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 266, 1991, p. 559).

In reality, I don’t feel like a survivor of heart disease. Why not? Because heart disease doesn’t go away. I survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake. When I was pregnant in the summer of 1978, I survived climbing the Desert Fortress Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea in Israel. The term “survivor” represents what I’ve lived through or persisted through, like plants survive the frost. Yes, I did survive what I experienced in June 2003. I am surviving—and actually learning to thrive with heart disease. I’m thankful to wake up every morning, and every day I try to make right choices.

I am a mother, a grandmother, a daughter, and a sister. I have successfully climbed the corporate ladder and have had the same ladder pulled out from under me. I am writing this book for:

—all the women I speak to, 90% of whom do not know or have not accepted that heart disease is our number-one killer.

• the women who believe that ignorance is bliss.
• the women who haven’t heard the news that it does matter if your father, uncle, or grandmother had heart disease.
• the women who believe that women—especially young women—are not supposed to have heart disease.
• the women who have given up listening to their bodies because every time they go to the doctor it is dismissed as neurosis.
• the women who simply don’t want to be bothered, who are determined not to travel down the road I want to take them.

This book puts a face to women’s heart disease: mine. I am your neighbor, your sister, your co-worker, the woman next to you panting on the treadmill—and yes, that’s me you see Saturday morning at the grocery store. I am not a doctor, and this book isn’t a medical guide, nor is it another book filled only with facts, figures, and data. It’s an honest story by someone who has lived through the trials of life and matters of the heart. Women relate to women, especially a woman who shares what’s happening deep within her chest. Once you see my heart, your own heart will become clearer, You will find the power to stand eye-to-eye with your doctor and represent yourself truly.

I mean to empower and encourage you to take better care of yourself, to be your own advocate and trust your God-given intuition. Trust yourself. Love yourself. This is the heart of my message to you.

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