It’s human nature to seek reasons for life’s unexpected twists and turns. When someone has a heart attack, questions inevitability arise: “Was he overweight?” “Did she have a family history of heart problems?” “He was getting pretty old, right? “Did she stop taking her cholesterol medication?”
But when the answer to all the questions is ‘no,’ and a reason is not readily apparent, what’s left is a frightening reality: everyone is at risk.
Michelle Mott is a walking, talking dose of that reality. Thirty-two-year-old Mott had a heart attack. She doesn’t smoke, she has no history of heart disease, she has no cholesterol problem, and she’s not overweight. And remember, she’s only 32.
But while Mott’s case is scary because it proves you don’t have to be in a risk category to have heart problems, her story does provide an important lesson: If everyone’s at risk, then everyone – even the runners, the vegetarians and the health nuts – needs to understand how to recognize and survive a heart attack.
“I am so fortunate,” said Mott, who lives in Dallas, Ore. “It never entered my mind that I could be having a heart attack. So, I waited for the signs to go away. I am so lucky I lived through it.”
Mott’s health crisis occurred one evening just after dinner and began with hot flashes. She sat down. Then came the nausea. She wondered if her dinner had been undercooked. Soon after, she found herself short of breath. Now she figured it was heartburn. Then she felt as if she were being punched, repeatedly, square in the middle of her chest. She drank Pepto-Bismol.
Knowing she had to be at work at 5 o’clock the next morning, Mott took a Tylenol PM and went to bed.
“I kept waking up throughout the entire night,” Mott recalled. “I felt like my blankets were smothering me. But I got up and went to work.”
Mott, a phlebotomist in Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center’s laboratory, told her co-workers of her uncomfortable night.
“They said what I’d had was not heartburn,” Mott said. “So I phoned the on-call physician at my doctor’s office and asked if it could be my heart. She kind of laughed at me and said, ‘you’re a 32-year-old female.’ So I went back to work.”
Kim Montagne, a nurse practitioner with Samaritan Heart & Vascular Institute, says unfortunately, the physician’s reaction was not all that uncommon.
“It’s getting better, but women are less likely to be diagnosed properly or taken seriously when they are having a heart attack,” Montagne said. “It’s often because their warning signs are not typical, like those men usually experience.”
While at work, Mott began to think about her blood pressure – it had been considered ‘high’ since childhood, but doctors told her it was her ‘normal.’ She’d played sports at high levels growing up and that never burdened her with any complications.
By that afternoon, she finally took the advice of her co-workers and headed to the emergency department at Good Sam. She quickly underwent blood and lab work and had an EKG. The results were undeniable: Mott had suffered an inferior myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack.
“All of the lab work came back elevated, but my EKG was normal,” Mott said. “That meant that the heart attack was over, but they knew I’d had one.”
Mott was sent to the cath lab for an angiogram, where a cardiologist looked into her heart’s arteries using imaging technology. Mott says physicians found that her coronary arteries, the blood vessels that supply the heart blood and oxygen, were smaller and more ‘wiggly’ than normal. They theorized that her blood pressure may have been indicating all along that her heart was working extra hard to push blood through her naturally narrow arteries.
Today Mott is taking blood pressure medicine, aspirin and preventive cholesterol medication. While she’s concerned about improving her physical condition, she’s found that working through the emotional turmoil is even more challenging.
“I was a wreck at first,” Mott said. “I have two kids and I thought, ‘this could be it.’ I’m doing better now, but the toll on my mental state has been difficult.”
Montagne, who has spent time talking with Mott about both the physical and mental impacts of a heart attack, says that anxiety and depression are very common in heart patients.
“People need a lot of emotional support after a heart attack,” Montagne said. “And especially for someone like Michelle, who may appear fine because she looks healthy and is young, it is even more important to find a strong support team.”
Mott says she’s now made exercise a priority, takes vitamins and is generally more concerned with living a healthy lifestyle. She feels more in touch with her body and knows that if she’s ever struck with a health emergency again, she’ll instantly give her attention to the warning signs.
“My kids are all the reason I need,” Mott said. “I plan to live a long and healthy life.”
For more information about heart health, including heart attack warning signs, visit our Health Information Guide.