According to the American Heart Association (AHA), heart disease kills nearly 50,000 Black women annually. The good news is, that when armed with the proper information, most heart disease deaths are preventable. Chantrise Holliman, a heart disease survivor and advocate for AHA’s Go Red for Women® Movement, hopes her second chance at life after a traumatic experience will encourage other women to take charge of their heart health.
On March 23, 2018, Holliman woke up with chest pains. She initially attributed them to indigestion from a cheese steak she had eaten the day before, assuring her husband that she was fine.
As the pain worsened, leading to nausea and vomiting, her husband decided to call an ambulance. On the way to the hospital, she lost consciousness.
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“In my head, I was thinking no because I have to go to work – I've got interviews to do this – I've got 15 things I have to do, but I'm thankful that what came out of my mouth was yes,” Holliman says of her initial hesitation to call the ambulance.
In the ambulance, Holliman’s husband explained the chest pain she was experiencing to paramedics and requested that she be taken to their regular hospital.
“She said if you take her there she won't make it,” Holliman recalls hearing the paramedic say before she blacked out. “The last three memories I have before I went unconscious was seeing my husband outside of the ambulance door getting in his car, hearing the sirens while I was in the ambulance, and then getting to the ER and seeing my husband standing outside…I don't remember anything else after that until I regained consciousness about a week later.”
When Holliman regained consciousness, she immediately went back into work mode, wondering when she would get out of the hospital so that she could tend to her large to-do list.
The mother and wife, who had suffered a widowmaker heart attack (a type of heart attack that occurs when you have a full blockage in your heart’s biggest artery) realized that things would not be that simple.
“I also live with lupus and after many many weeks of being in the hospital, it turns out that I found out that the reason why my heart attack was so complicated was because at the same time as I was having a heart attack – I was also having a lupus flare so whatever they were trying to give me to save my heart – to save my life – my immune system… was fighting it so they had to go through some pretty extending circumstances just to save my life,” Holliman shares.
Doctors were unable to get her heart to continue beating, which led to her bleeding out as doctors tried to determine why.
“Once all of that was revealed to me and I was in recovery in the hospital, I realized that I was partially paralyzed from the waist down because of the procedure they had to do to get the stent into my heart,” the 51-year-old adds. “I actually ended up having to have my legs amputated because of all of the medicine they had to give me to try to start my heart.”
Holliman was an emotional wreck as she came to terms with the fact that life as she knew prior to March 23, was over.
“There was no more running – there was no more wearing cute shoes…now [I] had to deal with this new body that I was presented with even though my heart was perfect, the rest of me was not,” Holliman says.
Once Holliman was stable enough, she began cardiac therapy where she learned to work on her breathing and regain her cardiovascular strength physically.
She also took part in the hospital’s non-profit organization, Wounded Hearts. “Wounded Hearts mended hearts helped me kind of get a grasp around what I needed to do differently in order to maintain my heart health,” she shares adding that meditation and sleep stories played a huge role in her recovery and helping her get the sleep she was missing due to the medication she was taking.
“I'm a woman of faith, but during this time my faith was shaken in ways that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to recover from,” Holliman adds. “It took me many months to kind of get back to that place where it was strong again and it took the support and the love of not just my family, but my sorority sisters – my mother praying for me praying and just reminding me of all the time that God had come through in the past and that this wasn't an indication that God wasn't real. This was just a test.”
Holliman’s, daughter also played a huge role in helping her overcome such a traumatic event.
“My daughter is her mother's child so she's extremely stubborn and on the days when I wanted to quit, she just wouldn't let me. Even when I was in the hospital and I was sort of just dealing with the trauma and wanted to just lay in the bed and not do anything, she was the one who made it very clear that was not an option…she was the one who encouraged me to get hand controls on my car so I could get back out to drive. She's the one who encouraged me [when] I had to go speak at a conference and I wasn't gonna go,” Holliman adds of her soon-to-be 27-year-old daughter, who was in college at the time of her mother’s heart attack.
Symptoms women should pay attention to
For Holliman, hindsight is 20/20. She now recognizes early warning signs that were alerting her of what was to come:
- High blood pressure. Holliman’s blood pressure was significantly elevated before her heart attack. She advises women to be vigilant about their blood pressure levels.
- Chest pain, nausea, vomiting, etc. Additionally, she experienced symptoms like chest pain, nausea, vomiting, and pain extending from her jaw down her arm, which she emphasized as crucial signs to take seriously.
- Vertigo. Three days before her heart attack, Holliman recalls experiencing vertigo, which she’d never experienced before.
Symptoms of a widowmaker heart attack include:
- Chest pain
- Shortness of breath
- Dizziness
- Upset stomach
- Tiredness
- Lightheadedness
- Pain in other parts of your upper body (arms, shoulders, neck, jaw or back)
Holliman advises women to seek medical attention if they experience any symptoms that feel off or unusual, even if they don't fit the typical chest pain stereotype associated with heart attacks.
"You couldn't have told me that while I was eating all of the kale and drinking all the water and running five miles every day at five in the morning, I was doing everything that I knew to do to stay healthy, and I still had a heart attack. I still, for all intents and purposes, died, and didn't think that it could happen to me, but it did,” she shares.
Advice for other women
- "I would say the first thing is to listen to your body. Your body is going to tell you when something's wrong, and I think a lot of times we ignore it because we're so busy taking care of everybody else."
- "If you know that something's not right, don't take no for an answer. Keep pushing until you get the answers that you need."
- "When you're going to the doctor, and they're telling you one thing, and you know it's something else, don't be afraid to speak up and say, 'No, I need you to check this. I need you to do this.'"
- "I would say definitely advocate for yourself. Be your own best advocate because nobody knows your body like you do."
- "It's okay to be afraid, but don't let fear paralyze you. Use it as a motivator to do something different."
According to the Cleveland Clinic, your heart attack risk increases when you:
- Are older than age 45 for men and people assigned male at birth.
- Are older than age 50 for women and people assigned female at birth.
- Have a family history of heart disease.
- Don’t have enough nutrition in your diet.
- Use tobacco products.
- Don’t exercise enough.
- Have certain other medical conditions, such as obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Immediate medical attention is crucial if someone is experiencing symptoms of a heart attack, especially if you suspect it may be a widowmaker heart attack due to the severity of the blockage and the potential for rapid deterioration without intervention.
