“The symptoms for a woman having a heart attack are very different than the symptoms for men having heart attacks.”
A little over a decade ago, Rosie O’Donnell suffered a massive heart attack — and didn’t even realize it as it was happening. Luckily, she survived the harrowing ordeal. Now, she’s sharing her story in an effort to educate women about the risks they often unknowingly face with heart disease.
In a recent podcast interview on “The Best Podcast Ever,” which is co-hosted by Raven-Symoné and her wife Miranda Pearman-Maday, O’Donnell explained how she completely missed the symptoms of a heart attack as they were happening to her. “I should’ve died,” she said. Amazingly, O’Donnell experienced the heart attack on a Monday, and only saw a doctor that Wednesday.
Here are the symptoms O’Donnell missed, and why she’s speaking out about her experience now.
Rosie O’Donnell shares new details about the heart attack that nearly killed her
Eleven years ago, O’Donnell was in a hospital parking lot helping a woman when she began to feel a little bit strange.
“[This woman] said, ‘Rosie, will you help me up?’” O’Donnell explained. “So I went over and I helped her up and it took a lot longer than I expected. I got home and my arms were hurting. I thought, ‘That’s funny, it must’ve been from pushing her up.’ So I went about my business.”
Later on, O’Donnell said, she was in her art studio when her son said she didn’t look so good.
“[He] said to me, ‘Mommy, you look like a ghost,’” she recalled. “[Then] I get home, I can hardly walk upstairs. I take two baby aspirin, I go to sleep, I wake up, and my family goes, ‘You have to go to the doctor.'”
But O’Donnell didn’t go to the doctor. At least, not immediately. “I had [the attack] on Monday and on Wednesday I saw a doctor,” she admitted.
When O’Donnell finally got medical care, she found out that she was experiencing a “massive heart attack” and was rushed to the emergency room. After undergoing numerous tests, she learned she had a 100 percent blockage of the left anterior descending artery, which is a type of heart attack commonly known as a “widow maker.”
“I was like, ‘Wait, wait, what?!’ I couldn’t believe it,” O’Donnell said. “And then I came to find out that the symptoms for a woman having a heart attack are very different than the symptoms for men having heart attacks. Yet what we see on TV are always men having heart attacks.”
O’Donnell eventually underwent surgery to put in a stent. Now, 11 years later, she’s speaking out about the importance of paying attention to those crucial signs.
What are the heart attack symptoms for women?
As O’Donnell noted above, there’s a strange media stereotype that seems to suggest men are the only ones at risk of heart attacks — but in reality that’s not true at all. In fact, heart disease is the number one cause of death for women in the United States.
Additionally, women can often experience different symptoms than the standard symptoms we so frequently see in media depictions of male heart attacks (chest and arm pain in particular). Tragically, this means that countless women fail to seek medical help quickly enough to survive an artery blockage or other form of heart failure.
Per the American Heart Association, common heart attack symptoms for women (in addition to the standard, unisex symptoms of chest and arm pain) can include: upper back pressure, dizziness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, and fainting. It’s critical to keep an eye out for those, in addition to the more obvious symptoms of heart disease.
Luckily, there are many things you can do to improve your heart health. If you’re looking for an easy place to start, check out this interview with a dietitian who focuses on cardiovascular health.
