Geri's Heart

From all outward appearances Geri Dino was the picture of health. As someone who not only practiced a healthy lifestyle, her role as a professor in the West Virginia University School of Public Health kept her well-informed on the latest health research. Geri remembers how confident she felt one morning while sitting in a seminar that described how a person’s genes could impact heart disease. She recalls thinking “I am so lucky. I have no risk factors. I will never get heart disease.” In the following day, Geri would remember those words.
 
Less than a half hour later, while working in her office, Geri found herself not feeling quite right. The sensation in her throat was bothersome, but not necessarily alarming. She remembers thinking that she must have “swallowed the wrong way.”

Unfortunately, the sensation not only did not go away, it intensified. The feeling increased from a slight discomfort to something much worse. As the pain moved to Geri’s chest, she noticed that “it really hurt, but again, it felt like an odd swallowing response. Then I started to get pain down my arm.”
 
Geri had been living with an undiagnosed 20% blockage in one of her arteries. Suddenly, for reasons that are still unknown, that small blockage burst and became a life-threatening 90% obstruction. As the pain increased, Geri called for help.  One colleague,  knowing her healthy lifestyle, tried to convince her that she was having an attack of heartburn. But Geri trusted her gut. “I hear this voice in my head say ‘something is really wrong.’ Sometimes you know. Well, that voice was saying ‘You are having a heart attack.’”
 
In the Emergency Department at Ruby Memorial Hospital, WVU Healthcare physicians immediately began treating Geri for a heart attack. They were not immediately sure of the cause of her pain, in light of her previous excellent health. Test results soon confirmed Geri's self-diagnosis, and within hours she was in the cardiac cath lab receiving a stent.
 
Luckily, Geri has no lasting effects from her cardiac episode. Geri recalls “I think I had so many things going in my favor. I had a healthy lifestyle. I’m aware of the symptoms of heart attack. I was at WVU and I had absolutely wonderful care. The circumstances could not have been better.”
 
As a promise to herself, Geri is using her experience to help provide a better future for potential heart patients by organizing research studies that focus on prevention. In fact, she is working with her cardiologist and his colleagues in the WVU Heart Institute. “You can’t solve these problems in isolation. We need to answer the questions like ‘why is a 50 something year old woman with none of the obvious risk factors showing up in the cath lab?’ We have to figure that out.”