♪ [music]

♪ - [Brittany]

"Go hard or go home" is kind of a motto that I've always lived by. You know, I was the task manager. What am I going to do today? I'm going to knock this off my list, this off my list, this off my list.

And I haven't made a to-do list since August 28th. I worked from the office on a Wednesday. I left work and decided to exercise after work before I started my evening chores of cooking dinner, and homework, and bath time. And I found myself really struggling to just get through the warmup.

I knew something wasn't quite right. So, I decided to just rest to give the workout up for the day and had dinner with the family, took a shower, and just started to have a lot of severe back pain. I found myself just a bit disoriented with my breath and just an overall feeling of sickness. I started to have neck pain and jaw pain.

Uniquely, those are symptoms of a heart attack in women. So, I made my way to the ER, they took me back almost immediately, and within 10 minutes had confirmed that there was definitely something going on. So, I stayed the night here in La Grange. When we made it to the cath lab, Doctor Ummat came in and she talked me through the process as though it was the first time she was explaining it to anyone.

- [Dr. Ummat]

Brittany came in with chest pain, and I think she's a good example of a patient who has none of the classic risk factors for heart disease.

- She told me when she was actually inserting the cath, I asked her if she saw a blockage, she said, "I absolutely do. It is completely occluded." And it seemed to be just a few minutes of a procedure that obviously saved my life. I worried a lot about my son, this family, how am I going to be able to take care of all of these people that, you know, really, really rely on me.

You know, the morning after the stent was placed, the heart cath was done, Doctor Kemp came to my room and I just kept asking her, you know, "Is this the beginning of the end?"

- [Dr, Kemp]

It's hard for anyone to be kind of faced with an event like this, especially something that could take you away from your family permanently. As a mom, that's a big pill to swallow. So, you have to recognize that there's going to be a lot of anxiety. There's going to be a lot of sadness.

There's going to be a lot of why me and all of these are very, very, very valid and very appropriate feelings. We talked about very close follow-ups and cardiac rehab and all of these things that have been shown to help someone recover emotionally from an event like this.

- Knowing that she said this is normal and you will get through this and you will be okay allowed me to just rebound, you know, very quickly.

- Heart disease is not just a physical problem. It affects us in other ways as well, especially emotionally. There are certain things we can't change. We can't change our genes.

We can't change our age. But we have so many things that are in our power to change, the way we eat, the way we exercise. We have a giant role in our own health and taking charge, especially of our heart health.

- I find myself sitting down and listening to my son tell a story. And before then I found myself saying, "Tell me later." "Hang on." "Give me a minute."

"Can we talk about it later?" And until you realize that you may not have that later, you start to appreciate it a lot more. What gets my blood pumping is this life I'm living. ♪ [music]

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