Get your heart checkup

Last fall, the minute my eyes opened in the morning, I felt it: Tightness in my chest. A feeling I couldn’t get my breath. My hands, which are shaky anyway, trembled even more. I was tired all the time.

I was pretty sure it was “just” stress – I was unhappy in my work, too busy for exercise, eating and drinking too much.

Then I found myself at a presentation about women and heart disease, listening to cardiologist Dharmesh Patel of the Memphis Heart Clinic paint a truly scary picture:

Though women fear cancer most, only one in 29 women will die of breast cancer. One in almost three of us will die of cardiac disease.

Between 60 and 80 percent of women over 45 have high blood pressure, but only half are treated for it.

Heart disease is the number one killer of American women, more deadly than the next seven causes of death combined. Women of all ages are at risk.

I thought I might have a heart attack right there in the room. Then the business card I’d tossed in the bowl was selected, and I was headed to a free cardiac evaluation, courtesy of the Memphis Heart Clinic.

My two-plus hour evaluation began Monday with a treadmill stress test, guaranteed to make your heart race just worrying about it. After 10 sweaty minutes, Robert, the tech who set the test up, asked, “You OK?” Hey, wasn’t he supposed to know that by looking at the computer screen?

The next test was the most fascinating: an echocardiogram, a real-time, ultrasound-assisted look at the heart’s anatomy. It’s awesome actually watching your heart beat, you know?

Turns out I have a slightly leaky mitral valve, something that Dr. Joseph Samaha, the clinic’s managing partner, who interpreted my tests, said he couldn’t even hear when he examined me.

So should every overscheduled, 40ish woman step up to this battery of tests? (Which also included a “lipid profile” to check cholesterol levels; results to come.)

Depends on your risk factors, said Dr. Samaha. Family history, whether you smoke, your blood pressure and cholesterol numbers, how much you weigh and how often you exercise all figure into it.

His most important message: “Don’t ignore things. Get (symptoms) looked into.”

The reason women die more often from heart disease than men, he said, is that we pretend we don’t feel the warning signs.

Are you listening, stressed-out women everywhere?

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On the Web

For a list of risk factors for heart disease, plus what you can do about them, go to iDivamemphis.com. Check out another conversation from the site, page M3. E-mail Leanne Kleinmann at idiva@idivamemphis.com or call 901-529-2535.