This morning I was reading my Parade Magazine insert and I was really intrigued by what Barbra Streisand (cover girl this week) had to say about heart disease. Barbra is most known for funding liberal causes but she recently donated $5 million to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for women's cardiovascular research.
Barbra's quote that got me thinking.
For so many years, research into women's heart disease was done on men. Can you imagine? We're not worth the studies? she asks indignantly.
Which brings me to the point of my diary that heart disease is the number 1 killer of American women, far ahead of cancer. I can personally attest to that statistic since my mother died following complications from a stroke following coronary bypass surgery.
My mother had been a lifelong smoker so she definitely contributed to her heart problems. She started smoking when she was young and the government had no warnings on the packs of cigarettes. Heck she even smoked when she was pregnant with me and my 3 siblings. She tried quitting cigarettes and the ironic thing she had stopped smoking 4 months before her heart attack but of course it was too late.
Once my mother had her heart attack she was told by the doctors she needed emergency bypass surgery that day or else she was going to be discharged and would be dead in a week. My mother was at her most vulnerable and agreed to the surgery because she was scared and completely trusted the doctors on this. I was not consulted (I live out of state) and my younger sister was on the road traveling and had turned around heading back to Alabama where my mother lived to go straight to the hospital so she was out of the loop.
Only after my mother had her surgery did my sister and I do research to find out it was the wrong decision. Women (especially older women with a history of smoking) are very poor candidates for bypass surgery. Less than 20 years ago doctors wouldn't even perform bypass surgeries on candidates 70 years or older. Women have much thinner blood vessels so repairing things is way tricker. Doctors have much better success with males and it almost seems routine for men to get triple and quadruple bypasses and they seem to come through those really well.
With the health care debate raging not much lip service is given to women and their hearts, especially aging women. If there was more research done on women and heart problems then maybe doctors would not be so quick to go for the bypass surgery which generally women don't do as well as men. I know my story is anecdotal but off the top of my head I can't think of any well-known women that have had bypass surgery and lived to tell about it.
Men do have more heart attacks than women but women tend to die after they suffer their 1st or 2nd while men survive multiple heart attacks (i.e. Dick Cheney comes to mind).
So to all my heart sisters out there stay strong and take care of your heart and do your research before you let the heart surgeons operate on you.