Shanelle Dawes was in the middle of training for a half-marathon, having spent several months walking intervals to prepare for the big race. It started out as just another normal day—she even recalls her son asking for spaghetti—but that normalcy was about to vanish.
“I had no signs or symptoms…So I went out for my mile again, and once I got finished with my mile, I went home and immediately started preparing the spaghetti,” she tells BlackDoctor. “That was fine and I felt normal—it was just like really any other day. But once I sat down on the couch, that’s when it hit me. All of these symptoms came rushing out of nowhere. It’s almost like something attacked me.”
Suddenly overcome by intense nausea, Shanelle’s distress was visible to her son, who rushed to get her a glass of water. “By the time he came back with the glass of water, I had jumped up and ran into the bathroom. Because now I’m ready to vomit, I’m sweating out of control,” Shanelle recalls.
After the initial episode passed, she tried to rest, thinking she was simply tired. However, the moment she lay down, the situation turned critical. “It was massive, beating on my chest, and I was trying to sit up and I couldn’t. I experienced that pain for about 20 minutes, and then after that, it just kind of went away,” she explains.
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The Danger of the Delay
Though she knew something was wrong, Shanelle didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. She spent a full week feeling “fatigued and drained” before a second attempt at exercise forced her to face the truth.
“I did not go to the doctor initially; I waited a whole week. I was just kind of fatigued and drained, just moving around kind of wonky all week. What ended up letting me know that something was wrong, was about a week later, I went back out with my mom this time to try to get a mile in and get my activity going again. I felt so down that I hadn’t done anything all week. As soon as I started picking up some speed walking with my mom, all those symptoms came rushing back for me. I started sweating again, I started experiencing chest pains and becoming nauseous,” Shanelle adds.
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Her mother immediately rushed her to the emergency room. “It was about a 20-minute drive from where I live… By the time I got to the emergency room, I was unable to talk or walk or anything like that, and they just wheeled me back to the ER,” Shanelle recalls.
A Shocking Diagnosis
Even at the hospital, Shanelle assumed her illness was temporary. “I honestly thought it was something that I ate that was causing me to be sick; I really couldn’t explain it or wasn’t paying attention to much of the other symptoms,” she says.
The reality was much more severe. Based on her EKG results and elevated troponin levels in her blood, doctors delivered a shocking verdict: she had suffered a major heart attack a week prior.
“I had pretty much every heart attack symptom known to man, and I was unable to recognize even one symptom. I had no idea that I had it at that time,” Shanelle shares. “It was pretty scary because now I’ve gone a whole week without treatment.”
Because she was only 35 and active, doctors initially suspected a small blockage. But as her condition worsened, the necessity for advanced care became clear. She was airlifted to Raleigh-Durham for emergency open-heart surgery. “After I went through this massive episode, I was like, ‘What happened?’ I have no family history whatsoever, but I did have a lot of stress,” Shanelle questions.
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Recognizing the Red Flags
In the aftermath, Shanelle began to connect the dots of her health. She realized she had ignored a significant indicator: rapid weight gain. “I was gaining a lot of weight, and people were talking about it, but no one was saying anything directly to me. That was the motivation behind trying to get the miles in and get prepared for the race, because I could physically see that I had gotten heavier. I wanted to try to get my weight gain under control. That was one of the things that stood out to me that was going on, but I was not paying attention to it,” she says.
Her story is a stark reminder that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women, claiming more lives than all forms of cancer combined. Black women face the heaviest burden, with 59 percent of those over age 20 living with some form of the disease, according to the American Heart Association.
Shanelle believes the “strong Black woman” trope often plays a role in these delayed diagnoses. She remembers driving her son to school the very morning after her heart attack began. “I literally drove him to school the next morning because who else was going to do it? A lot of times we just don’t think anything’s going on with us, or if there is, we’re like, ‘Okay, I’ll be okay, maybe I just need to give myself some rest,'” she explains.
Prioritizing Self-Care and Advocacy
Now, the 43-year-old, who underwent six months of cardiac rehab, is an advocate for herself and others. “We have to understand that to take care of ourselves, we have to be active, watch what we eat, and try to manage our stress as much as we can.”
As a middle school assistant principal, she has learned to carve out time to decompress. “You have to let it go. At that time, I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders and was completely stressed out. You have to give yourself some quiet time… After I’ve spent time with my son and settled my day, I take at least ten minutes. Sometimes we bring the work home, but you have to carve out some time. I love to read, so I make sure I do that every night,” the Middlesex, North Carolina native adds.
She also urges women not to let embarrassment keep them from the doctor. “I didn’t want to go to the doctor until I lost the weight, but the whole time, I had something life-threatening happening. Don’t think, ‘It can’t happen to me,’ because that literally was my story,” Shanelle shares.
A Year of Transformation
Today, Shanelle serves as a member of The American Heart Association’s 2026 Go Red For Women Class of Survivors. “Being a member of the Class of Survivors—it isn’t just about the physical things, it’s about life. It’s an amazing opportunity to take something that was a really stressful time in my life and put it on a national platform,” she says. “It gave me the ability to connect with my community even more and put my story out there in hopes that people who hear it may take a second to think about what’s going on in their own lives.”
Looking forward, Shanelle is declaring 2026 her year of transformation. “I came into this year knowing it was going to be absolutely fantastic. To be honest, the past few years have been very difficult. For me, it means I’ve finally reached a place where I recognize that all the things I’ve gone through had a certain purpose. I’ve gone through those seasons of tests and trials that we all face, and 2026 is my year of transformation,” she says.
Her final advice to those on a recovery journey is simple: be patient. “Give yourself grace as you’re going through this. You aren’t going to be able to jump back into life’s works immediately. Just give yourself that grace and the time you need to get back to where you were. It’s been almost ten years for me, and it has been a long road. Some years are better than others, but you will reach a place where that reward—and everything you are experiencing—will start making total sense,” she concludes.
