susan lucci wants women to ignore the instinct 'not to bother the doctor'

soap opera royalty susan lucci is opening up about her experience with heart disease in an attempt to help other women take their health seriously.

lucci, best known for portraying erica kane on the daytime drama all my children from 1970 to 2011, had emergency heart surgery in 2018 after narrowly avoiding a heart attack. several weeks after she started experiencing chest pain, she saw a doctor who informed her that two of her cardiac arteries — including the one that transported most of the blood to her heart — were clogged. had they progressed much further, lucci, now 75, almost certainly would have had a heart attack.

she told people magazine this week that she had downplayed her symptoms for so long because she wasn’t prioritizing her health.

an estimated 65 per cent of people who provide unpaid, informal care to family or friends are women, according to the family caregiver alliance . in fact, studies have shown that women spend up to 50 per cent more time providing care than male caregivers do. and while women who are caregivers suffer more adverse health effects than other people, they’re also less likely to have their own health needs met, the organization says.

while lucci did focus on her own health before her emergency surgery — she did pilates six days a week, a habit that made women’s health magazine laud her as a “fitness badass” just a month before her near-heart attack. but when her chest started hurting, she initially thought it was just that her bra had been clasped wrong. and when it happened again, she chalked it up to stress or fatigue — she didn’t even mention it to anyone.

she was lucky to be in a store when she experienced what felt like “an elephant pressing on my chest,” she told the american heart association several months later. the manager offered to drive her to the hospital.

the procedure involved a stent (a little tube that keeps the arteries open) being inserted into the two blocked arteries. it was a success, and she recovered quickly. she gets check-ups every six months.

heart disease “is the number one killer of women,” lucci told people . it “kills seven times more women every year than all cancers put together.”

in canada, 32,000 women die from heart disease and stroke every year. indigenous women and women of chinese, south asian and afro-caribbean descent are the most vulnerable. a lack of access to things like health care, education and affordable food and water have a significant impact on the prevalence of heart disease, according to the heart and stroke foundation of canada .

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susan lucci wants women to ignore the instinct 'not to bother the doctor'

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