SCADengers

You may not know but I experienced a SCAD Heart Attack 12 months ago.

Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, commonly known as SCAD, is an emergency condition that occurs when a tear forms in a blood vessel in the heart. When the layers of the artery separate, blood can pool or collect in the area between the layers. This can form a blood clot which slows down or entirely blocks the blood flow to the heart which can result in a heart attack, heart rhythm abnormalities, or sudden death.

Let me share part of my story with you:

As I was ironing my children's school uniforms I felt a strange tiredness and sat down for an hour to have a break to see if that would help. After an hour I thought I'd start getting dinner ready so I made my way to the kitchen and started to prepare the ingredients to make burgers which my children always enjoyed.



Suddenly, another wave of extreme tiredness came over me. In m mind, it felt similar to what imagine happens to a large industrial manufacturing machine when it shuts down. It was like feeling "all systems shutdown" and I literally felt all the energy in my body completely drain away.

I thought I'd go back to the living room and sit down a bit longer but by the time I sat down on the couch I felt the most painful stabbing feeling in the middle of my chest. The pain left me in terrible agony and I knew something was extremely wrong so I asked my daughter to dial the ambulance and pass her mobile phone to me.

The first thing the 000 operator instructed me to do was to chew on 3 aspirins. Lucky for me we had aspiring at home so my daughter rushed and brought them to me. Within a few short minutes the paramedics had arrived. The stabbing sensation in my heart got worse and worse, and I feared the worse as my left arm started to feel completely numb and I could feel my jaw start to lock. The look on one of the paramedics face as he panted heavily and worked quickly confirmed my fears. Another couple of minutes and 2 MICA paramedics arrived as well.



Even in those frightening moments I commanded my son to leave the room as they cut open my jumper and my husband to pull himself together and remain calm so that he wouldn't panic our children. All I could think about was my children's well being. I felt my eyes filling with tears as I let my husband know that I was very scared.



I kept telling myself "I am OK, I am OK, I am OK" as it was the only way I knew to command my body to do everything it could to keep my alive so that I could see my children again, and again and again, well into their adult years; and also for my own reasons that I still had so much more that I still wanted to do, so many more joyous and fun experiences I wanted to have with the people I loved most, and so many places I had yet to travel and see.

Within minutes I was taken to the hospital and had a stent put into my heart as my left anterior descending (LAD) artery was 100% blocked. I was later informed that I had had a SCAD Heart Attack and that 1 in 4 people don't make it to hospital.

There is a great deal more to this story, including my road to recovery, but I wanted to give you an insight into the frightening ordeal that I experienced as a result of having a SCAD heart attack and to raise awareness of the impact it has mostly on young women in their 40s.



I am participating in 2019 5k Melbourne SCADaddle for SCAD Research.

It would mean a lot to me if you would donate to my Fundraising Page to raise much needed money for SCAD Research to better understand, diagnose, treat and ultimately prevent SCAD Heart Attacks.

You can sponsor me and leave a message by selecting the donate button above.

Thanking you from the still beating corners of my heart.