A MENTAL HEALTH STORYTELLING SERIES
“When I was 16, my favorite uncle passed away from a heart attack. He was 42 years old. That made a big impact on my life.
When I was even younger, my grandpa had a heart attack. He survived, but I saw how it put him into a depression. I saw how going through this can affect your mental health.
Fast forward a few decades, and I started having my own heart issues, and my own mental health journey.
I was having a really tough time in my life. This was a very hard chapter. I’m an estate attorney, I had a lot of work stress, I was traveling a lot for my job, and my father was going through a horrible divorce that was affecting our family and my grandparents’ legacy. It all put me over the edge with my health.
Randomly and suddenly, my heart rate would race up to 200 beats a minute. It would happen whenever – driving, sleeping. And it felt really bad. I definitely thought (many times) that I was going to die.
I didn’t know what it was. Were they panic attacks? Was I having a heart attack? It was a mystery because when I was having these heart episodes, I wasn’t hooked up to anything. There was no EKG, nothing was being recorded.
I’d go to doctors and they’d say, ‘You have anxiety. You’re a woman in your 40s and you’re taking care of your parents, and you have stress. You’re fine – go meditate. Take some Ativan.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I do have anxiety and stress. But something is also physically wrong with me. I am sick.’”
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