Knowledge helped her find her way back.
You could say I was a workout junkie, addicted to the adrenaline surge I got during a hard workout. My jones led me to hike t he steep and rocky Great Wall of China, mountain bike the switchbacks along Texas' Fossil Ridge, make the slippery pre-dawn hike to the top of Blue Mountain and soar 25 feet high on a trapeze. That said, you might guess that it would take some kind of calamity to make me afraid to jog a slow mile or hop on my bike and take a spin around my hilly neighborhood.
It happened in May 2003,after the first leg of a 26.2-mile fundraiser walk for breast cancer. At first, I felt fine, but at 3:30 a.m. I awoke with my jaws clenched and a heavy cramp in my chest. I felt nauseated and scared. I knew what was happening, but it would take more than a year for me to fully understand and accept that I was having a heart attack at 36. In a tent. In the middle of a fundraiser walk.
A week after the walk, stress test and electrocardiogram results said I was fine, despite the hot daggers I felt in my chest when I ran on the hospital's treadmill. So that day I was admitted and had a balloon angioplasty and three stents put in to prop open my narrowed left coronary artery.
I was dumbfounded. I thought that all of this time I was trading exercise and a fairly healthy lifestyle for immunity from health problems like cancer and heart disease. I've been a fitness instructor for 10 years and a fitness editor for seven, so I preached the gospel of the preventive powers of exercise. Some part of me felt duped and robbed.
I wasn't anything close to a perfect health disciple. I was carrying about 20 extra pounds, but I had no other red-flag risk factors. My good cholesterol was nearly three times as high as doctors recommend, but my blood work revealed high levels of a type of bad cholesterol that is genetic and probably will never budge, despite exercise or drugs. That, plus the year-long stress of moving to a new city for a new job, was probably what tipped the health balance that had been teetering for some time.
The recovery from surgery was quick, and in a few weeks I started cardiac rehabilitation to help me ease back into the habit. Cardiac rehabilitation helped me find my low gear, but I still wanted to sweat hard like I had before. In rehab, I had a hard time staying positive, wired to a monitor like the Six Million Dollar Man, barely breaking a sweat as I walked slowly on a treadmill alongside folks who had much more severe heart problems. Square one was time zones away from where I wanted to be. But in three months I finished rehab and gradually started moderate workouts.
Then, it happened again. Six months after the first heart attack, the evening after a 30-minute easy run, I drove myself to the hospital with chest pains. The blockage was the right coronary artery, which had shown no signs of blockage six months earlier.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE
I wasn't getting better. My job was still stressful and I was still internalizing it. And although I was a fitness editor of a national magazine, pressing deadlines and fear another easy jog would land me in the hospital again made my workouts fewer and farther between.
Part of the frustration was a lack of information. Heart disease is still considered a man thing, although more women have died of heart disease than men each year since 1984. Most women who have heart attacks have them after menopause, but estrogen isn't as protective as they thought. I'm your proof.
Turning point No.1 was finding WomenHeart, the National Coalition for Women With Heart Disease. There was no local group chapter in the city where I live, so I went to national meetings, including the Women's Health Symposium at the Mayo Clinic in 2004. And each time, sharing stories with other women helped me adjust to my "new normal."
The fitness turning point came much later. Each of my heart attacks happened fewer than 10 hours after strenuous physical activity. I wanted and needed to exercise. But a lot of fitness information for heart patients assumes we're all sedentary bon-bon eaters who need to rebuke our slothful ways. I wanted guidance on how to feel like I used to feel during a good workout--exhilarated, challenged and confident.
Truth is, being in good shape and heeding early symptoms helped me avoid grave and irreparable damage to my heart. Understanding that convinced me to stop blaming myself.
Two years after my first heart attack, I bought a heart rate monitor--a belt-like strap that I wear under my clothes at my bra line--and a spiffy red watch that shows the readout. Whether I needed it more as a lucky charm or a gadget to track my heart beats, it gave me the reassurance I needed. When I work too hard, it beeps to remind me to slow down. I programmed it with my weekly fitness goals. When I reach them, a little trophy appears on the watch and stays there all week.
Chasing my weekly trophy has kept me motivated and on track. So far I've lost 10 pounds. I've returned to teaching fitness classes and sometimes ride my bike to the gym. And I've learned that a low-intensity walk with my dogs is just as vital to staying fit and reducing stress as my harder walks are. Overcoming both the addiction to and the subsequent fear of exercise took some time. But now I have enough confidence to sweat to my heart's content.
--Nichele Hoskins
You could say I was a workout junkie, addicted to the adrenaline surge I got during a hard workout. My jones led me to hike t he steep and rocky Great Wall of China, mountain bike the switchbacks along Texas' Fossil Ridge, make the slippery pre-dawn hike to the top of Blue Mountain and soar 25 feet high on a trapeze. That said, you might guess that it would take some kind of calamity to make me afraid to jog a slow mile or hop on my bike and take a spin around my hilly neighborhood.
It happened in May 2003,after the first leg of a 26.2-mile fundraiser walk for breast cancer. At first, I felt fine, but at 3:30 a.m. I awoke with my jaws clenched and a heavy cramp in my chest. I felt nauseated and scared. I knew what was happening, but it would take more than a year for me to fully understand and accept that I was having a heart attack at 36. In a tent. In the middle of a fundraiser walk.
A week after the walk, stress test and electrocardiogram results said I was fine, despite the hot daggers I felt in my chest when I ran on the hospital's treadmill. So that day I was admitted and had a balloon angioplasty and three stents put in to prop open my narrowed left coronary artery.
I was dumbfounded. I thought that all of this time I was trading exercise and a fairly healthy lifestyle for immunity from health problems like cancer and heart disease. I've been a fitness instructor for 10 years and a fitness editor for seven, so I preached the gospel of the preventive powers of exercise. Some part of me felt duped and robbed.
I wasn't anything close to a perfect health disciple. I was carrying about 20 extra pounds, but I had no other red-flag risk factors. My good cholesterol was nearly three times as high as doctors recommend, but my blood work revealed high levels of a type of bad cholesterol that is genetic and probably will never budge, despite exercise or drugs. That, plus the year-long stress of moving to a new city for a new job, was probably what tipped the health balance that had been teetering for some time.
The recovery from surgery was quick, and in a few weeks I started cardiac rehabilitation to help me ease back into the habit. Cardiac rehabilitation helped me find my low gear, but I still wanted to sweat hard like I had before. In rehab, I had a hard time staying positive, wired to a monitor like the Six Million Dollar Man, barely breaking a sweat as I walked slowly on a treadmill alongside folks who had much more severe heart problems. Square one was time zones away from where I wanted to be. But in three months I finished rehab and gradually started moderate workouts.
Then, it happened again. Six months after the first heart attack, the evening after a 30-minute easy run, I drove myself to the hospital with chest pains. The blockage was the right coronary artery, which had shown no signs of blockage six months earlier.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE
I wasn't getting better. My job was still stressful and I was still internalizing it. And although I was a fitness editor of a national magazine, pressing deadlines and fear another easy jog would land me in the hospital again made my workouts fewer and farther between.
Part of the frustration was a lack of information. Heart disease is still considered a man thing, although more women have died of heart disease than men each year since 1984. Most women who have heart attacks have them after menopause, but estrogen isn't as protective as they thought. I'm your proof.
Turning point No.1 was finding WomenHeart, the National Coalition for Women With Heart Disease. There was no local group chapter in the city where I live, so I went to national meetings, including the Women's Health Symposium at the Mayo Clinic in 2004. And each time, sharing stories with other women helped me adjust to my "new normal."
The fitness turning point came much later. Each of my heart attacks happened fewer than 10 hours after strenuous physical activity. I wanted and needed to exercise. But a lot of fitness information for heart patients assumes we're all sedentary bon-bon eaters who need to rebuke our slothful ways. I wanted guidance on how to feel like I used to feel during a good workout--exhilarated, challenged and confident.
Truth is, being in good shape and heeding early symptoms helped me avoid grave and irreparable damage to my heart. Understanding that convinced me to stop blaming myself.
Two years after my first heart attack, I bought a heart rate monitor--a belt-like strap that I wear under my clothes at my bra line--and a spiffy red watch that shows the readout. Whether I needed it more as a lucky charm or a gadget to track my heart beats, it gave me the reassurance I needed. When I work too hard, it beeps to remind me to slow down. I programmed it with my weekly fitness goals. When I reach them, a little trophy appears on the watch and stays there all week.
Chasing my weekly trophy has kept me motivated and on track. So far I've lost 10 pounds. I've returned to teaching fitness classes and sometimes ride my bike to the gym. And I've learned that a low-intensity walk with my dogs is just as vital to staying fit and reducing stress as my harder walks are. Overcoming both the addiction to and the subsequent fear of exercise took some time. But now I have enough confidence to sweat to my heart's content.
--Nichele Hoskins
Leave a comment