One of our viewers named Susan shared that she had familial
hypercholesterolemia (FH). She and I made contact and she has several different
stories that she'd like to share that I think people need to hear - for example
young women can have heart disease and to ignore it is perilous. I have on
the phone with me Susan Bolton. Susan, you responded to a comment on the YouTube
channel and said that you have familial hypercholesterolemia. You and I talked
and you had some very interesting stories about how you discovered this back
in your 30s. Would you like to share that> sure it was 1980 I was 34 years old.
We had been over in Wyoming backpacking that summer several times.
About Thanksgiving - I walked regularly about 4 miles a day I - about Thanksgiving
time I went out to go for a walk and didn't make it a half a block
before I had some real pain in my chest and I didn't think I was going to make
it home. My dad had just had heart surgery and I figured it had to be
angina but I'm going - you're a little young for that - so I went to my doctor
and he said, "oh you've got the flu. Come back in a month if you don't feel better."
I'm going - this isn't the flu - so I went back in just a few days and told
him, " I'm having chest pain every time I try to walk". so he sent me to have a
treadmill - angiogram is that right
it's probably a treadmill test okay and so I went and did that and
didn't have any angina until they laid me down on the table well I got home and
my doctor called me and he said I did a cholesterol test and your cholesterol is
600. I'm going ,"oh boy!!" I was 34 years old and two young
girls. I didn't expect to live to see my girls grow up!
He sent me to Salt Lake City I had my first coronary bypasses in March of 81
and they wanted to do five but they were only able to do three because they said
there was nothing to bypass - there was so much blockage in my heart so they did
the three and just said we'll see what happens.
At that time they didn't have the
statins so they gave me some medicine - and I took that with my meals
and it didn't do much at all so they had me go on a vegetarian diet
and that didn't do much so I just went on I weighed a hundred and fourteen
pounds at the time and I was so uptight about everything and I started eating to
relieve my anxiety. I got very heavy. As you can see Susan's got several
amazing stories to share with us the first one - she's already she just shared
on this video how a young woman can have heart disease and go to the doctor and the
dock can just totally miss it based on the assumption that young women don't
have heart heart disease. quite often that
assumption works but not always - and again that could have been lethal had Susan
not come back and said look this is a problem this is heart disease I want my
heart checked she saved her own life I'm sure when she did that she also has some
other stories regarding weight gain some of the medications that that she went
through and some of the other challenges that she has successfully dealt with
with familial hypercholesterolemia. She also has some information for us
regarding the use or lack of use of genetics so again I'm looking forward to
sharing other parts of the series on Susan's story. Thank you for your
interest!