Her pain was like muscle, but it was actually a heart attack

Friday, September 25, 2020 (American Heart Association News)-After taking her daughter to practice softball, Kelly Sosnowski stopped by the shopping street to finish her errands.

As I walked inside, I felt severe pain in my chest and upper back. She stopped and the pain was relieved. But when she started walking again, the pain returned.

She sat down for a few minutes and found a place to rest, and the pain disappeared. It reminded me of the feeling of lifting a heavy box. She wasn’t exercising hard, but she chalked it until she had muscle soreness.

The next morning, Kelly was working at home. The tightness on her chest and back was relieved, painful, and she called a general practitioner.

“If I didn’t understand, I would have had a heart attack,” she joked to the doctor.

The doctor said it sounded muscular and Kelly suggested freezing her back. She did, and it helped.

That night, the tension returned. It got worse and caused shortness of breath.

“Should we go to the emergency room?” Asked her husband, Brian.

“What can they do?” Kelly said. “Muscle”

She had no reason to worry. At the age of 41, she was healthy, ate well, was not overweight, and had regular health checks.

In the shower the next day, the pain became more intense as Kelly raised her arms to wash her hair. An hour later, on a hot Saturday in July, the family headed for their son’s baseball tournament, an hour away.

Kelly felt pain all day long.

“She watches most of the games from the car and the air conditioner is working,” Brian said.

They had a supper appointment, but Brian claimed to go straight home. That is, until I see Kelly leaning forward and feeling pain in the front seat.

“We’re going to the hospital now,” he said, looking back at the car and calling on his son-in-law to meet them to take the child.

In the emergency room, tests revealed that Kelly had a heart attack. The next morning, it was confirmed by echocardiography. Her left anterior descending artery, the artery that supplies blood to the anterior and left sides of the heart, was 95% blocked. The next day, the doctor implanted a stent to restore blood flow to the heart.

During those first two days, Kelly was emotionally observing the activities around her. It’s as if she’s looking down on it. Severity struck her only after her son and daughter visited the day after surgery.

“I cried all day,” she said.

Kelly went home the next day. She was given a wearable defibrillator because of concerns about how much blood her heart could pump.

Instead of reassuring with a defibrillator, Kelly and Brian felt the opposite.

“I was afraid to live and I was afraid to die,” Kelly said.

“I felt like I slept with one eye open until the vest came off,” Brian said.

A month later, Kelly’s cardiologist declared that his heart had fully recovered and that his vest was no longer needed.

Still, her doubts remained.

“I was still scared to death, this is how I got out of the leftfield,” Kelly said.

She has a heart disease in her family-my uncle died of a heart attack and her father is being monitored by a cardiologist-but previously had no health problems.

“I was initially telling everyone that I had a heart attack right away, but Brian said,’No, you had,'” she said.

“I’m young and healthy and you’re rehabilitating for some deficiencies I don’t have,” she said, so she didn’t want to go to CPR at first. “But I came to love it. It taught me that I could trust my heart again and gave me the confidence that I felt active and incapable of dying.

In February 2018, Kelly attended the first American Heart Association event, the Gored Luncheon for Women, where she shared her story.

“I understand how important both listening to others and telling me are to my healing,” she said.

She realized that her story wasn’t unique. Studies show that women take longer to receive treatment for heart attacks than men. The median delay is about 54 hours for women and 16 hours for men.

Three years later, Kelly said, “I feel like I’m completely back to normal. I didn’t expect this day to come.”

She returns to exercise and monitors her heart rate and blood pressure. She still volunteers to volunteer to talk to the group about her experience and hopes that others will not dismiss their symptoms like she does.

“The days of not thinking about a heart attack will never pass,” she said. “I found a strength that I didn’t realize I had. I am very grateful for the time I spend with my family.”

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