One in four women in Ireland die from heart disease and stroke, yet many women don’t consider themselves at risk of heart disease. “Most women think they are going to die from breast cancer when in fact, they are six times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease,” says Dr Angie Brown, medical director of the Irish Heart Foundation.
Not only do women think they won’t die from heart disease, the indicators of a heart attack are sometimes missed as they are often different from the classic symptoms of crushing chest pain that shoots down the arm. Instead, women having a heart attack can have nausea, tiredness, shortness of breath, back pain or tightness of the jaw.
Louise Adams didn’t feel well after arriving home from her job one evening in December 2018. “I had chest pain but I thought it was indigestion. But then the pain got worse and worse and I started to vomit,” she explains. Her husband Noel called for an ambulance and by the time it arrived, she felt like “there was a elephant sitting on me. I couldn’t breathe with the pain and tightness in my chest”.
The paramedics quickly realised she was having a heart attack. “They couldn’t give me an injection because my veins had collapsed. So, they gave me an aspirin and morphine nasal spray. I remember saying, ‘Please don’t let me die’.”
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In hospital, she had an angiogram which revealed the blocked artery into which a stent was put to allow the blood to flow again. “I was sent home on December 23rd, but I didn’t feel well again on St Stephen’s Day. I went back into A&E and they brought me straight back into theatre for another angiogram and two more stents.”
She was sent home again on New Year’s Eve, but, a few months later, she was back in hospital for surgery to put in two more stents to relieve further blockages and, incredible as it sounds, Louise had another stent put in two weeks later. “I was devastated. Even though my grandmother died of a heart attack at 50 and my mother had a heart attack (she’s fit as a fiddle now at 75), I never thought I’d have a heart attack myself.”
She wasn’t back in work until September 2020.
‘My husband cooks and there is no salt allowed anymore. Before my heart attacks, I wouldn’t have eaten anything without salt’
Today, sitting in the Marks & Spencer cafe in Mary Street, Dublin – where Adams manages the catering and food hall staff – she feels grateful to be alive. “I came back to work and just got stuck in, but what happened has helped me to put things in perspective. I used to worry about everything but now I take every day as it comes. I appreciate people and tell the staff here to look after their health.
“I feel like I didn’t have any symptoms before my heart attack, but now I watch my blood pressure and have my cholesterol checked twice a year. I tell the girls at work to get their blood pressure and cholesterol checked,” says Adams, who takes tablets for blood pressure, cholesterol as well as blood-thinning medication.
She put herself forward for interview because of a partnership between M&S with the Irish Heart Foundation to raise awareness of heart health. The campaign also seeks to encourage women who are experiencing unusual symptoms to seek help immediately. Irish research has found that one of the reasons many women die from a heart attack is that they don’t go to the emergency department early enough.
Other factors that increase the risk of heart attack are smoking, being overweight, having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being inactive or having diabetes. A family history of heart disease and a stressful lifestyle also increase your likelihood of suffering from heart disease.
Louise now recognises that she was at a higher risk of getting a heart attack due to her family history. Since her heart attack, she had made changes to her diet (replacing fries for breakfast with cereal, fruit and toast and eating yogurt and sandwiches at lunchtime) and has stopped smoking. “My husband cooks and there is no salt allowed anymore. Before my heart attacks, I wouldn’t have eaten anything without salt.”
She also goes to aqua-aerobics once a week. “I feel that I’m here to tell my story, that you can get better and be all right. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Did that really happen to me?’”
