heart attack hits LYNNETTE heart attack hits LYNNETTE at age 47

Asa critical care nurse and emergency medical technician, Lynnette Anderson knew the symptoms of a heart attack. She’d taken care of patients as the ambulance raced to an emergency room and in the hospital after they’d had a heart attack.

Yet Anderson didn’t recognize that she was having a heart attack while doing fall chores at her family’s farm near Page, North Dakota.

“I had this aching feeling in my left arm that wouldn’t go away, no matter what I did,” Anderson recalls. She chalked the pain up to window-washing and garden cleanup. She tried over-the-counter pain relievers and a heating pad but the pain came and went over the September weekend.

Her husband, Rick, asked if she might be having a heart attack and suggested a trip to the emergency room to check it out. He’d recently heard an ad about how women often have different symptoms than men.

But Anderson insisted that she’d already gone down the checklist of heart-attack symptoms and she didn’t have chest pain, shortness of breath or sweatiness. Most important, she was only 47, had no family history of heart disease and didn’t have any risk factors.

“I just didn’t think that I could have a heart attack,” Anderson recalls.

When the pain persisted on Monday, Anderson decided to visit her physician, Dr. Richard Vetter at the Essentia Health–West Fargo clinic. An EKG showed she was having a heart attack.

“When they gave me a nitroglycerin tablet, my arm pain went away,” Anderson says. “As a nurse, I knew what was going on when the nitro worked: I was having a heart attack.”

An ambulance transported Anderson to the cardiac catherization lab at Essentia Health—Fargo. An interventional cardiology team found one artery in her heart was 99 percent blocked and placed two stents to open it.

On the morning of her hospital discharge, Anderson’s emotions finally caught up with her and she realized she could have died. “Wyatt Mitzel, the physician assistant, was wonderful with me,” she recalls. “He said you have to wrap your head around the whole deal: You’re 47. You had a heart attack and you have two stents. This is your new normal, your new life. And it’s OK.”

Anderson says support from her family and friends helped her navigate her new life. “Women who had had heart attacks came out of the woodwork and asked me, ‘How are you doing, really?’ I could confide in them and they knew exactly what I was going through,” she says.

HEART ATTACK SYMPTOMS — in women —

Don’t wait to get help if you experience any of these heart-attack warning signs. Although some heart attacks are sudden and intense, most start slowly, with mild pain or discomfort. Pay attention to your body — and call 911 if you feel:

Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of your chest. It lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.

Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.

Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.

Other signs such as breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.

While women most often experience chest pain, they are somewhat more likely to experience shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain.

Anderson now reaches out to other women, including sharing her story as the featured survivor at the American Heart Association’s first “Go Red for Women” luncheon on Feb. 2 in Fargo.

Anderson encourages women to know heartattack symptoms and heed them. She also stresses the need to make their health a priority. “As women and mothers, we always put everyone and everything first and put ourselves near the bottom of the list,” she says. “We need to move ourselves up on that list and make our health a priority.”

Dr. Samantha Kapphahn, Anderson’s Essentia Health cardiologist, agrees and says women tend to dismiss heart-attack symptoms or attribute them to something else. “We need to be aware of the symptoms and seek medical attention immediately,” Kapphahn says. “More minutes put more heart muscle in jeopardy. That can mean the difference in surviving a cardiac event and making a good recovery.”

“Don’t do as I did, do as I say,” Anderson stresses. “I was lucky. Know your body and pay attention to those vague symptoms. Don’t hesitate to call 911.”