About martzj

• www.inspire.com/martzj
• 55 years old, Female, Married
• Newport News, Virginia
• Joined December 20, 2006

Hi,
I was born in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, USA. I wouldn't find out I was also born with a heart birth defect until I barely survived massive heart attack on a sweltering, humid summer night six weeks after turning 41 in 1996. That was also when I was told this wasn't the first heart attack, there was pre-existing scar tissue from heart attacks, in addition to two blocked arteries (RCA,90% and LAD,95%). Damage from this heart attack : permanent at 41.

Having lost consciousness and fallen down a flight of stairs during the on-going attack, I developed large blood hogging hematomas along left thigh, hip, shoulder and temple that created almost instant acute anemia once tPA(massive clot buster) was administered in ER. This required 6 units of blood transfused over the next 3 days and tubes in both groin arteries in an attempt to stent both blockages. Only the right one was able to be opened that night. The LAD stent had to wait until I was more stabilized 4 weeks later. When I showed up for my 4 week post HA stress test and failed it, I told my cardio I felt deep aching in my chest and heavy depression, that I could barely walk to the car. He said, "Well, you have nothing to be depressed about" while looking down at whatever he was scrawling in my charts. Because this man had saved my life, I let this comment pass but it was said in front of his young male intern, thus continuing the gender bias perception that a female saying she has post HA depression is 'whining' rather than suffering a damaged heart symptom that comes with heart tissue death. He then scheduled a 2nd cath to stent the mostly blocked LAD now I was a bit more stable but obviously still very fragile. Within 2 more weeks I was stented and sent back into full-time work force, still badly stunned, confused.

There would never be any answers forthcoming from doctors as to why a young, slender, non-smoking, active, careful eating female had suffered a series of mild to near deadly heart attacks from late 30s to 41. All misdiagnosed as Fibromyalgia/CFS/GERD...sent home with a doctor's work excuse note (at $200 each) from the milder heart attacks with no testing, no cardiac meds...just instructions to rest for 2-4 weeks due to 'unexplained deep fatigue'. Also referred to a psychologist to 'talk about how bad I felt.' To date, I have never met a woman who talked out a coronary blockages of 95% or birth defects. Four years I sought medical relief consistently and the proof was living and growing in my chest....it would have shown up on any scan by that time. Not one doctor sent me for cardiac testing. Ever.

It is my great hope to live to see this antiquated, non-science based attitude towards testing, diagnosing and treating women with heart disease change from the proposturous and absurd, to savvy and agressive on many fronts. A specialist with strictly limited health insurance 'allowable billing codes' is not excused from referring a patient who presents with symptoms beyond his/her expertise. I find this practice chilling because it involves physician choice at every stage.

Odd moments that I hope other women will be spared: the 2 EMTs, stationed 2 blocks from my home, spent 20 minutes arguing vehemently with each other, arms crossed, nose to nose in my doorway, over who was going to do the IV stick. At no time did they look my way or even touch me...rolled a cart in, told me "m'am, you need to lie down". When I fell face down onto the cart unconscious they stopped arguing long enough to say, "maam, you need to turn over'...they were still lodged in the doorway, not touching or helping me in any way. They kept this up inside the ambulance until the driver hammered on the window...'what the hell? Are we going or not?" Did I mention I was a fully insured Blue Cross Blue Shield patient? This is what it has continued to provide.

Meantime, my heart kept attacking, I was fading in and out, could only gasp-talk. The hospital was a mere 8 minute straight shot but it took forever due to weird EMT power struggle and personality conflict. When the lead female finally hooked on some EKG leads to my chest, she said in an astoundingly blase voice, "M'aam, you're having a heart attack." Duh! I could only gasp and pant at the time.

At the ER: Extremely young dr asked incredulously, his voice cracking , 'maam' are you still having periods???!!' "YES" . "Really??? His voice rose a few octives as if I were some extreme medical oddity...certainly a first for him. They tPa'd and I was given something for the pain, then left immediately alone for a long time assuming I was stabilized. When the dr returned much later I could barely gasp, "no, the pain has never stopped.' The attack had continued on and on for at least an hour and a half from EMT arrival to this point in ER. Now the ER doc jumped into action, called the heart cath doc who had driven home and now had to come back in...another 45 minutes while the cath lab was activated and staff rounded up.

Three hours of high stress fight-the-clock intensity in angio lab as the dr fought to insert stents and finally had to back off from the stent number 2. I was a sick, nauseous, vomiting and freezing.. so cold I had violent shaking and shivering that took 20 minutes under piled on heated blankets to subside. 5 days in CIC were touch and go, often quite brutal, tubes left in both groin arteries in case I coded and they had to restent. Only ice chips until day 4, when I was able to keep down some juice.

I was sent home abruptly day 7, with no mention of cardiac rehab, although my insurance fully covered it. I was told not to drive for a month, lived alone at the time, had no way of getting to information and was too brain-stunned for many months for anything to stick. Isolation was terrible. Depression was anvil heavy in my chest, hematomas now locked my thigh and hip mucles down to bone, deforming the muscles during the 6 months they took to fade away. Numbers, counting change, recalling phone numbers took many tries and was deeply frustrating. Cross word puzzles I used to whiz through in minutes, now took an entire day of trying and retrying. None of this was taken into account during medical evaluations but it continued to have a huge impact on my quality of life and glacially slow recovery progress. The most dangerous continued to be such extreme nausea that never subsided to the point I was only able to consume Ensure Lite, liquids. Rarely able to get solid food past the extreme gag reflex that came with heart attack (and is still around 13 years later). Dr's comment: 'Your diet is terrible.' Dr was clueless and had no way to treat chronic nausea.

There is no coming back from scar tissue at this time, so it is critical medical culture advance towards speedier cardiac distress response time to get women having heart attacks into a cath lab, arteries swiftly stented or bypassed to stave off the death of oxygen starved heart muscle and brain. For women having massive heart attacks with sustained damage during their prime reproductive years, there is a constant battle to recover from blood loss after each menstrual cycle. This is extremely relevent to the younger woman's quality of life and survival odds. I would not pull out of chronic and acute anemia until a partial hysterecomy at 49. Acute anemia is a heart attack risk factor and yet younger women are not told about this nor is it even considered by cardios, ob/gyns. I hope we can work to change this. Quality of life in younger women (under 55) after acute MI is worse than for older women. There is no support system in place at this time. We are just expected to go on without assistance, as if youth has anything to do with helping a heart with blockage and scar tissue feel better at 41 than it does at 61. This is not reversable, it is a progression. At this time.

I hope to see these issues addressed and altered for the better in my lifetime and far more science applied as testing becomes more sophisticated at accurately scanning women's hearts. Experience with 20 years in the high energy physics research world has led me to observe new technology drives changes. It is our best hope....We can't afford to wait the average 17-20 years it takes medical culture to adopt new practices in women's heart issue detection, diagnosis and treatments.

It is my intention to form a support group in my locale now that I've found and spent more than a year visiting this WH site. THat the same dangerously ignorant beliefs that women aren't really having heart attacks is continuing to be taught and practiced by the broad spectrum of medical culture is not sustainable in the 21st century. Judging from the amount of young women who show up here daily, I am more than ever convinced heart disease grows in the female heart almost as early as young males. Nothing that happened in my case was 'rare'. I presented with mostly male cardiac distress symptoms yet was repeatedly dismissed.