Christine Rekash - Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day is important to me because…
Christine is a volunteer with the American Heart Association’s Heart Valve Ambassador Program and shares her story to help raise awareness. She wrote this blog in honor of Valve Disease Day, February 22.
Women are natural caretakers that don't always put their own needs first. We must make time and invest in our own health for ourselves and the people who depend on us. This is not always easy to do but we must make a personal commitment to get regularly scheduled checkups and follow through with doctor's recommendations if more testing is ever needed. I would like to share with you my journey of how I made a personal commitment to myself to keep a watchful eye on my mitral valve prolapse with severe regurgitation (leaky heart mitral valve) for several years before it was recommended that I have a valve repair. Read more about my journey.
At a general routine physical, my primary care physician detected a heart murmur. Upon being referred to a specialist, I was told that I had Mitral Valve Prolapse with regurgitation. Mitral valve disease is very complex and requires careful analysis to properly identify and characterize the disease.
Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day is important to me because, I know how I felt when I was first diagnosed with a leaky mitral valve. I felt scared and alone and did not understand the importance of how deadly this can be. While I was told that initially having a heart murmur and mitral valve prolapse was a rather common occurrence, I did not know what this would mean for my future. I was prescribed a generalized prescription of beta blockers to "treat" the palpitations or fluttering heart that I did not attribute to my recent diagnosis. Timing is essential to operating, as a repair to your own valve is much more advantageous than a replacement. Therefore, a personal commitment to follow up appointments is vital to surviving heart disease.
Heart valve issues are very often confused with the everyday stresses of life, such as overall fatigue, shortness of breath, lightheadedness and palpitations. As women, our first reaction is to ignore and shrug off any symptoms that present themselves, but we must be our own advocates. We must take matters of the heart into our own hands and seek professional medical advice if something does not feel right. Valve disease can be often be asymptomatic and can be deadly if the warning signs are ignored. Heart disease affects 1 in 3 women, however 80 percent of all heart related events may be prevented by healthy life style changes and education.
This is why heart valve disease awareness is important to me. Giving a voice to heart valve disease is essential to raise awareness for this often silent but deadly disease.
Women are natural caretakers that don't always put their own needs first. We must make time and invest in our own health for ourselves and the people who depend on us. This is not always easy to do but we must make a personal commitment to get regularly scheduled checkups and follow through with doctor's recommendations if more testing is ever needed. I would like to share with you my journey of how I made a personal commitment to myself to keep a watchful eye on my mitral valve prolapse with severe regurgitation (leaky heart mitral valve) for several years before it was recommended that I have a valve repair. Read more about my journey.
At a general routine physical, my primary care physician detected a heart murmur. Upon being referred to a specialist, I was told that I had Mitral Valve Prolapse with regurgitation. Mitral valve disease is very complex and requires careful analysis to properly identify and characterize the disease.
Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day is important to me because, I know how I felt when I was first diagnosed with a leaky mitral valve. I felt scared and alone and did not understand the importance of how deadly this can be. While I was told that initially having a heart murmur and mitral valve prolapse was a rather common occurrence, I did not know what this would mean for my future. I was prescribed a generalized prescription of beta blockers to "treat" the palpitations or fluttering heart that I did not attribute to my recent diagnosis. Timing is essential to operating, as a repair to your own valve is much more advantageous than a replacement. Therefore, a personal commitment to follow up appointments is vital to surviving heart disease.
Heart valve issues are very often confused with the everyday stresses of life, such as overall fatigue, shortness of breath, lightheadedness and palpitations. As women, our first reaction is to ignore and shrug off any symptoms that present themselves, but we must be our own advocates. We must take matters of the heart into our own hands and seek professional medical advice if something does not feel right. Valve disease can be often be asymptomatic and can be deadly if the warning signs are ignored. Heart disease affects 1 in 3 women, however 80 percent of all heart related events may be prevented by healthy life style changes and education.
This is why heart valve disease awareness is important to me. Giving a voice to heart valve disease is essential to raise awareness for this often silent but deadly disease.
