Karen Kleinman Karen knows a thing or two about heart health. As director of the Heart & Vascular Center at Memorial Medical Group, it goes with the territory. Kleinman knows the warning signs of a heart attack, she knows what to do if you think you’re having one, and she knows the protocol that should be followed for a heart attack patient. She just never expected to experience those things as a patient herself. When she had trouble getting through a walk around her block one Saturday in early 2018, she wasn’t very worried. She’d recently undergone foot surgery, and her doctor had just given her the all-clear to start walking again. Kleinman is a daily walker, so she was thrilled to get back out there. When her trip around the block drained her energy, she attributed it to the two-month break she’d had to
take to recover from her surgery. Other than being energy-depleted, she felt fine. Nothing hurt, and nothing seemed amiss. The next day, though, Kleinman didn’t feel right. She describes feeling as though she’d swallowed a large pill that had gotten lodged in her upper chest, just below her neck. Though she hadn’t eaten lunch, she took an antacid in case it was indigestion. It didn’t help. At this point, she began to suspect she might be having a heart attack. She didn’t really think she could be though. “You convince yourself it is really nothing,” Kleinman says. She had no pain — in her chest or otherwise — but not all heart attack patients do. That’s especially true for women. That funny feeling in Kleinman’s upper chest though — what the American Heart Association describes as “uncomfortable pressure, squeezing or fullness” — was a warning sign. Kleinman took an aspirin and headed to Memorial.
Soon after she arrived, she learned that she was indeed having a heart attack. It was a surreal experience for Kleinman, who couldn’t believe she was seeing things from a patient’s perspective. As she puts it, the staff and physicians — people she works with every day — “just kicked into action. It really was an incredible process.” And before she knew it, it was over. She attributes her heart attack to genetics — her father had heart problems, but she wasn’t at high risk otherwise. She ate a healthy diet, exercised, and kept her blood pressure under control with medication. Kleinman says it’s important for everyone — women in particular — to heed the warning signs, even if they assume they aren’t at risk. “Women tend to take care of everyone else in their life and not necessarily themselves,” she says. “We need to learn to listen to our bodies.”
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