By Laura Lennie, News Staff

Heart disease has many faces and affects women of all ages.

For Sarah DiCresce, it came in the form of a heart attack at age 23.

“I didn’t have the healthiest lifestyle,” the 34-year-old said. “I was a pretty heavy smoker all through high school and university, smoking about a pack/pack and a half a day. I did enjoy alcoholic beverages and especially through university, I would say I had pretty limited physical activity, but so did all my other friends; it was just the lifestyle that I lived with everybody else, so, certainly, I never felt that I was at risk.”

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in Canada. Risk factors that can be controlled include smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, physical inactivity and obesity. Factors, which cannot be controlled, include age, family history and ethnicity.

Symptoms of heart attack can include nausea and/or vomiting, sweating, pain in the arm, throat, jaw or pain that is unusual. They can also include unusual fatigue or difficulty breathing. The most common symptom – in women and men – is chest pain.

Sarah had been living with her then boyfriend, now husband, Josh for about two months, before her heart attack began on Jan. 8, 2001.

After a few days of experiencing vomiting, chills, fever, pain in the chest, shoulders and difficulty breathing, Sarah and Josh went to a walk-in clinic in Westdale.

“The first two days, my symptoms were vomiting, chills and fever, so we – along with our family doctor – just figured it was the flu. At the time, it made perfect sense, but then, I started to feel worse,” Sarah said. “When we got to the clinic and the doctor listened to all of my symptoms, her face went blank. She said, ‘You need to get to McMaster right now.’”

Doctors told Josh that Sarah was in full congestive heart failure, she would die in a couple of hours and her parents needed to be called.

The flu had weakened Sarah’s heart, which was not functioning properly. As a result, her lungs had filled up with fluid and she couldn’t breathe.

Sarah was taken to the cardiac respiratory care unit to live out her final hours.

Hours turned into days.

About a week in, Sarah experienced three ventricular tachycardia episodes, where her heart rate jumped to 220, 240 and 260 beats per minute.

Doctors ordered an angiogram to find the cause of the fast heart rate. They found a 99.8 per cent blockage in one of her arteries, which had led to the heart attack.

Sarah left the hospital several weeks later with a defibulator implanted in her chest to help keep her heart rate regulated.

She also left knowing she would need to make cardiologist/specialist appointments, follow-up tests and medication intake part of her regular routine.

“I wasn’t ready to die and I know that because I have more things to do in my life, so my heart picked up the pieces and figured it out. I had that moment where I thought, ‘I faced my death’ and I never forget, I think about it every single day in some capacity,” Sarah said. “All the doctors appointments can get in the way of every day life. I get frustrated that I have to go back as often as I do, but the reality of it is, it’s what keeps me here, so it is what I have to do. I’m incredibly grateful to Hamilton for all it has and continues to do for me.”

Sarah said too many women are being lost to heart disease.

“It is by far because women don’t know the risk factors or recognize the symptoms and because we’re too busy. We know that there’s something nagging, there’s something not right in our bodies, but we feel we have all these other things to do, so we put it off, push it aside and make excuses for what else it could be,” she said. “Know your risk factors, know your symptoms. It’s about women maybe saying, ‘You know what, I deserve to get this checked out, I deserve to address this, I need to set some time aside for this to be checked out’ because, in the end, you want, and deserve, to life a long healthy life.”

For Sarah, living a long healthy life means a few things.

“I’m not perfect, but I certainly don’t smoke. I exercise as much as I possibly can and I try to maintain good mental health – don’t sweat the small stuff kind of thing,” she said. “I do function at 30 per cent of what a normal 34-year-old’s heart should be and I do get tired at the end of the day, but I can honestly say that I do every other normal thing. I live for my children, husband and family – they’re the reason why I’m here.”

Heart disease and stroke take one in three Canadians before their time and it is the No. 1 killer of women.

For more information on heart disease or how you can help change these statistics, contact the Heart and Stroke Foundation Hamilton office at (905) 574-4105 or visit www.heartandstroke.com.