Rosie O’Donnell recently sat down with wives/hosts Raven-Symone and Miranda Pearman-Maday on The Best Podcast Ever, and she talked about the massive heart attack she had in 2012. I’m glad she’s still sharing her experience, because she describes what many women tend to do when it comes to our own healthcare — dismiss a potentially serious situation. Sweep it under the rug. Even though she knew she felt more than a little fatigued when it was happening, and even with her family adamantly urging her to go to the doctor, she waited two days to go. And even then she still didn’t think it was serious enough for the ER. It most definitely was:
She was being a good samaritan: The health scare happened when O’Donnell was 50. She was in a hospital parking lot picking up a friend when a stranger asked her for assistance. “She said ‘Rosie, will you help me up?’ So I went over and I helped her up and it took a lot longer than I expected,” she recalled. “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.”
Her kid knew right away that she looked off: The comedian continued, “I was in my little art studio and my son, who was only young at the time, said to me, ‘Mommy you look like a ghost.’” The mom of five explained to one of her sons that she was “so tired” and her arms were hurting. O’Donnell then Googled “women’s heart attack signs” and she had “a few of them” but not enough to worry herself because it didn’t “seem” like a heart attack.
Instead of going to the doctor she took two aspirins: “The truth of the matter is, I had this heart attack on a Monday at 10 a.m.,” the Emmy Award winner said, noting that she still continued with her regular daily routine. “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.’ I waited until the next day. So I had it Monday and on Wednesday I saw a doctor.”
She finally saw a cardiologist who immediately rushed her to ER: O’Donnell ultimately went to a cardiologist, rather than the emergency room, still assuming that it wasn’t a heart attack and not wanting to take away resources from people who need it. They immediately told her she was having a “massive heart attack” and she was rushed to the ER. “I was like, ‘Wait, wait, what?!’ I couldn’t believe it,” the former daytime host 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.”
She had a type of heart attack called the ‘widowmaker’: At the hospital, doctors learned that O’Donnell had a 100% blockage of the LAD or left anterior descending artery — a type of heart attack alarmingly known as a “widowmaker.” She then had an operation to put in a stent to save her life.
The attack forced her to be in touch with her body: The A League of Their Own actress called herself “really lucky” to have survived the heart attack and said it changed her relationship with her body. “It forced me into my body and to be in touch with my body in a way that I never had been,” she explained. “It made me aware of feelings. I can kind of dissociate and do the world from my head and just try to use my intellect and not really pay attention to my body, but this forced me to pay attention.”
I am so guilty of not going to see the doctor when I notice an unusual symptom. Part of me feels like the answer always ends up being “it’s nothing,” and I’d rather not pay $30 – $200 for that report, thank you very much. But I may have a heart attack now myself if I get into the weeds on our healthcare system, so instead please check out this info on women and heart attacks.
This story brought me back to my grandmother, who had a very serious heart incident at 70. Like Rosie, she noticed some symptoms but didn’t think they were cause for alarm. Still, she went to her doctor and he had her do a stress test. My grandmother thought she’d ace that no problem, as she had a lot of energy. She flunked, spectacularly. The doctor would not let her leave the hospital, the results were so bad. She had to have an emergency quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement. And because life is so often the theater of the absurd, I do vividly recall that the nurse’s station at that particular hospital had stacks upon stacks of Dunkin’ Donuts boxes. The smell of sugar hit you well before the towers of pink and orange. God Bless America!
photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Getty and via Instagram
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmcWtma4Rze9GoqqKdj6SxsLrNnqOll5iWsaCtvqGcmqqklK61wMCcopiZpJSCcavWmqCtnZSUwbi7vp2YsquPqbygs86Yq6iXpJ2yoLDOnKuoql8%3D