When it comes to February’s Heart Health awareness, my thoughts go directly to my family.  I think of my family that has been here and gone, and I think of my young healthy family that I spend each and every day with.  My family has been plagued with the tragedies of heart disease before I ever entered the world.  From strokes to heart attacks to the unfortunate aftermath of health problems that can follow, it has been like a dark cloud under which my family has lived.

Why the doom and gloom you ask?  I’m really not here for that, honest!  But I do think that this is a perfect time to tell you a little bit more about me.  By telling you about me, you will see that heart disease can attack anytime, anyplace, and it doesn’t care who you are.  I want to share a snippet of my story, just in case it happens to help anyone it reaches. 

Although hypertension became an official part of my life by the age of 24, it wasn’t until I reached 30 with both my parents already deceased that I realized heart disease was no joke.  It wasn’t until I had my own children three years ago that I started caring.   Now, at the ripe ole’ age of 35, I still have trouble managing my blood pressure, and I can officially add pre-diabetic to it as well.  Now is when you ask, “What are you doing wrong?  And what are you doing about it?”  Before you jump to conclusions about me, let me tell you a few things that I am NOT:

• NOT a smoker
• NOT overweight
• NOT a couch potato
• NOT ignoring doctors suggestions

Apparently risk factors of heart disease like hypertension and pre-diabetes do not necessarily care if you’ve exercised and played sports all your life or if you are the healthiest eater at work.  I am far from health-perfect, but I am far from the ‘worst’ as well.  So, although managing all of these things can help you avoid heart disease, and its risk factors, you can’t run from your genes.  Ugh, my dreaded genes!   It may be in bad taste to joke by saying that I have seen more strokes in my family than at a swim meet, but it’s pretty much the truth.  Heart health has been a golden fruit that just has not been in the reach of our family’s gene pool.  Which is all the more reason why I have to be smart about my own healthy choices.   (Rest easy, the tasteless jokes are done.)

So back to the reasons why I am sharing this!  Recently I went to the ER with my high blood pressure.  After suffering through numbness, heart palpitations, sweats, nausea, dizziness, and a fainting spell, I finally said I would go.  (Why wait so long??)  All the way there all I thought was that ‘I cannot do this to my children’.  I am not willing to be a sick parent if there is anything I can do about it.  I want to be around when they are getting married and having kids.  Sounds dramatic?  I’m not trying to be, but these are the realities of what I have grown up with.  We learn from our experiences, and I am trying to grow from mine. 

Before I go further I want to point out how long I waited to seek medical attention.  I waited too long, worrying about inconveniencing everyone, worrying who would feed the kids and put them to bed.  When I finally got there my blood pressure was 225/123.  I was fortunate nothing else happened.   Why is it that as women and mothers we think that our symptoms don’t matter?  I have waited out these symptoms before, and I just can’t do that anymore.  So I am here to say to all of you…Don’t Wait!  Listen to your gut, listen to your intuition.  You know your body better than anyone else!  I have waited too long, too many times.  I won’t be doing it again.  Part of taking care of yourself is listening to your inner voice.  If I don’t want history to repeat itself in my family, I have to make time to take care of myself.  If I do that, I can take care of everyone else for many years to come.  My family is my motivation, and that’s all I need.