Three years ago today I experienced the scariest, most traumatic event of my life: I had a heart attack at just 32 years old.

I had just returned to work from a brief maternity leave and was looking forward to a long weekend of baby snuggles and a nice family picnic. However, instead of spending that time on a blanket in the warm sunshine with my boys, I spent it in a cold hospital room in the cardiac ICU recovering from a spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). Because I didn’t get that picnic three summers ago, I decided to make it a tradition, a picnic every year around May 27 to celebrate each year of survivorship. Of course this year we’ve skipped the picnic due to a lot of factors like the constant dreary weather, the pandemic, and being in the middle of packing everything up for a move.

But I’m still in very good physical health and my mental health has improved tremendously, though I still occasionally deal with some PTSD stuff. But I get to watch Sebastian sing songs and learn new things and run around, and I’m extremely thankful that I was so lucky, that I’m still here to watch him grow. I’ve always felt that all the little things count so much, but now I know just how much.

In this third year:

–I signed up for and started training for the inaugural 5K SCADaddle© for Research to run 3.2 miles and raise money for more important SCAD research. The race was originally supposed to be held in April but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, so my training has also been postponed but I’ll get back into it soon!

–I continue to be active in several online support groups, including a SCAD Survivors NC Facebook group where I can connect with and support survivors who truly understand what I’ve been going through these last three years because they’ve experienced it, as well.

–I’m still eating better. My diet has never been horrible but we now make it a habit to cook at home more and to ensure we’re eating fresh fruits and veggies.

All in all, I’m doing very well. And I’m *still* looking forward to a long lifetime full of sunny, warm picnics!

Skip. Like what happens when you hear a loud clap of thunder that makes you jump up out of your chair, but instead I’m just sitting at my desk in my quiet office, staring at the computer screen.

Flutter. Like the butterflies you get in your stomach when you’re nervous, but instead it happens in my chest while I’m sitting quietly on the couch, watching the evening news.

Race. Like when you’re watching your favorite sports team hit the winning shot right at the buzzer, but instead I’m sitting in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam.

These are the peculiar sensations I’ve been feeling in my chest lately. For the average person, they’re no big deal. For the anxious person, they’re pretty common. For someone who is about 3 months post-heart attack like me, they’re cause for concern. My primary care physician thought that these sensations were simply due to stress. She made me go to the cardiologist, who agreed that it was probably just stress because everything else looked fine, but hooked me up to a holter monitor just to be sure.

Holter monitor, hour 1

A holter monitor is a small, portable monitor that measures your heart’s rhythm. I wore this monitor for 48 hours last week. Every time I felt a skip, a flutter, or a racing sensation, I pressed a button on the side to record the sensation in the results and then I described in a little journal exactly what I felt and what I was doing when I felt it. At the end of the two days, someone read the monitor and compared it to the notes in my journal to figure out what was causing my heart to act up like this.

Holter monitor, 24 hours

My two biggest fears regarding the results were on opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand, I was afraid that the results would come back totally normal and would not show anything wrong. You’d think this is the best case scenario, but for me and my anxious mind, it would mean that I’m just crazy and/or hallucinating these sensations when I absolutely KNEW I wasn’t. On the other hand, I was afraid that the results would come back showing something catastrophic, like my heart was giving out and I only had a few more days to live, all the while wondering how I even made it this long.

Holter monitor, hidden under my shirt and in my jeans pockets

I got the results back this week and, luckily, they were right where I’d want them to be, comforting every so slightly my chaotic mind. They found that my heart rhythm is normal and that the ‘fluttering’ sensations correlated with occasional premature heart beats. These are benign but can feel strange or abnormal. Ultimately, there is no clinical concern but I should try to control my stress levels, as stress exacerbates the prematurely timed beats.

So, I’m not going to die of heart failure any time soon, which is good news. I do feel the occasional skip and flutter but my mind doesn’t automatically assume the worst. I’m working on addressing the stress in my life, which is extremely difficult given that I’m a new mom with a hectic work schedule. I’m slowly getting to a point where, when I feel my heart make its weird beats, it feels a little more like this:

Skip. Like when I see Nick and Sebastian after a long day and it makes my heart skip a beat.

Flutter. Like when my closed eyelashes lightly brush against Nick’s closed eyelashes during a long kiss. 

Race. Like when Sebastian is about to roll over/crawl for the first time and I’m so nervous for him but I know he’s strong and can do it. 

I bought these pants at Zara last July on my trip to Los Angeles to visit my best friend so I call them my “LA pants.” On the day I got them, we had planned to go hiking in Griffith Park while Nick played golf but when K told me there was a Zara in the mall, I begged her to take me there instead. I wanted to be able to say I went shopping at Zara. Why this was a big deal to me, I still have no idea, but I went and ended up with these awesome pants. I only got to wear them a few times because I knew that I was pregnant and pretty soon they wouldn’t fit. So now I’m making up for lost time. I wore this outfit to work last week and received a few compliments. Not bad.

I like that the floral pattern has a lot of different colors; they’re pretty easy to match with different tops. I chose red for this outfit but I’ll probably go with pink next time and mustard after that. The possibilities are pretty much endless. I also really like the straight leg. While I think skinny jeans/pants look nice and are comfortable, I’m also a fan of the larger leg opening of straight and boot cut jeans because I think they can be just as flattering. And they make me look a little taller than I am!

Cardigan: ModCloth | Blouse: Le Tote | Trousers: Zara | Shoes: Banana Republic | Sunnies: Target

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