2-1-19 wear red day

Friday is National Wear Red Day, and one Wisconsin woman who’s surviving heart disease says there are lessons in her story. Kelsey Gumm was in Navy boot camp when she passed out, for what seemed to be no reason. It took her ten years of fainting spells and misdiagnoses before one day she passed out at the gym. Gumm couldn’t feel her arms and legs and people told her she looked gray. A nurse practitioner sent her to a cardiologist, who said the left bottom part of her heart was spongy and not compressing correctly.  Gumm now has a pacemaker and has even gone back to regular exercise. She plans to go red for heart disease in women on Friday, and says women need to treat their symptoms seriously.   Gumm says the classic image of the heart attack doesn’t always apply. She says it could be an overweight, middle-aged man who feels like an elephant is stepping on his chest and has pain in his jaw and shoulder. Or it could be a healthy-seeming woman having what’s mistaken for a panic attack. Gumm says health-care providers have to listen to women, and women need to stand up for themselves. The diagnosis cut short Gumm’s planned career in the Navy, but she’s 32 now and embracing an active life again – after a couple of years feeling angry and scared.   Cardiovascular disease kills an American woman every eighty seconds – more than all kinds of cancer combined. Details at heart.org.