RICHMOND, Va. - Heart disease is the number one killer of all people and all new moms, with pregnancy-related deaths in the United States rising 140% over the last three decades, according to the American Heart Association.
Almost 43% of deaths are among Black women and more than 32% are among American Indian or Alaskan Native women.
It’s important to recognize and not ignore heart attack signs.
I spoke to Dr. Bundy, a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Henrico’s Doctor Hospital, who shared these common symptoms:
- Chest pain or pressure
- Pain in your shoulder… arm… jaw… back or upper belly.
- Fatigue or shortness of breath
- Feeling light-headed or faint
I also met Jasmine Storrs, a Henrico mother of three who felt some of these heart attack warning signs for multiple days but ignored them.
She thought they were postpartum aftereffects.
She urged everyone, especially new moms, to pay attention to their bodies and be proactive with their care.
Storrs spends most of her day caring for children Za’rae, 11, Za’mir, four, and Za’mari, who is 9 months old. She thrives in the daily grind and is very involved in everything her kids do from gymnastics meets to T-ball games.
"My favorite thing about being a mom is just the genuine love aspects of it," she said.
But nine months ago, just two weeks after her third child Za’mari was born, Storrs' everyday routine took an unexpected turn.
“My chest started hurting," she recalled. "It was almost like cramps, but just in my chest. So it was more irritating and naggy than, 'Oh, my gosh, something is wrong.'"
She ignored the nagging feeling for two days. It took convincing from her husband to call her OBGYN for advice.
“I called Dr. Davis and [said] my chest hurt and my left arm is hurting. And she said it sounds cardiac. You need to go to the hospital," she said.
But Storrs thought her OBGYN was being dramatic, so she laid down for a nap, ignoring both the warning signs again and her doctor’s orders.
“Less than 30 minutes later she called me back. She was like, 'Hello, what are you doing?' I was like, 'I'm lying down. I'm ready to go to sleep.' She was like, 'No, get up or I’ll send an ambulance to your house.'”
Hearing her doctor’s stern tone, Storrs checked into Henrico Doctors' Hospital.
"I get to the hospital and they do an EKG, and it was abnormal, but it wasn't anything that would signal that I was having a heart attack," she said.
A blood test later revealed a shocking abnormality. Her troponin levels were 41,000.
"[The doctor] said, we've never seen anyone have those high levels of troponin," she said. "He was like, 'You've been having a heart attack for a couple of days.'"
Troponin is a protein that’s released into the bloodstream during a heart attack.
"A normal level is less than 50 or 60. It's a low number. So when you get into that several hundred or thousand range, then you're getting to a level that's important," Dr. Graham Bundy, a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Henrico Doctors, told me.
Storrs' troponin level was 40,940 above normal.
Doctors rushed her into surgery for a cardiac catheterization.
"The very next day, the pain came back and it was like, times ten," she said.
Then at three the next morning, after another EKG, she got another visit from her care team.
“Two cardiologists and six nurses came, and they surrounded my bed," she said.
The team told her she was having another heart attack and experiencing heart failure.
"I started crying," she said.
Doctors told her they'd already called her husband and he approved the surgery — an open heart, double bypass surgery.
Doctors told her they needed to act fast and without the surgery she would die.
"I was just distraught because I was like what if I don't wake up? I didn't get to tell my kids I love them, and I didn't get to tell my husband I love him," she said. "I could just imagine what he was going through to be a single father and at the same time, mourning the possibility of your wife not being here."
Her husband Devon Storrs called Jasmine, whom he has known since high school, his true love.
“That's our rock. It just felt like without her being around or possibly even thinking of her not being here, I wouldn't even know which way we're going, to be honest with you. We were just really at a low time for that period right there," he said.
Storrs, who is only 31 years old, survived the open-heart surgery.
"The number of patients that I operate on for heart disease is probably less than 2% for somebody in that age range,” Dr. Bundy said. “For heart surgery, it's pretty rare. Most of the time, particularly for bypass surgery, it's exceptionally rare.”
According to the National Institute of Health, the mean age of bypass patients is 68 and a half.
“No one ever thinks that you can be 31 and have a double bypass," Storrs said.
After her surgery, Storrs quickly became the talk of the hospital.
"Nurses came and visited me like, 'Oh, we just wanted to see the baby.' And I'm like, 'What baby?' They're like, 'You,'" Storrs said.
Back with her family, but not feeling like herself, Storrs was under heavy restrictions for the first five months.
“The first month at home, I felt like I was a baby, not even going to lie, just because I had to get help with pretty much everything," she said. "The physical was hard. Just learning how to sit up, move, go to the bathroom, put on socks, put on shoes was hard. But it was the mental that was the biggest load for me, because. Sorry. I questioned God a lot, it. Because it was like, I'm a good person, I'm a good mom, so why did I have to go through that? And I didn't feel like I deserved to almost die and leave behind three kids and a husband.”
“But in the time where I was questioning, why me? Why me? It was God coming to say, why not you? What makes you so special to not go through something like this?"
Storrs also struggled to make sense of her near-death experience at such a young age.
Doctors told her there was nothing she could have done to prevent her heart trouble and it was the result of recently giving birth.
"It wasn’t your fault," I told her.
"It wasn’t my fault," she agreed.
"She still has her ups and downs because she keeps saying, 'Why me?' But at the same time, I keep telling her, 'You might be one of God's strongest soldiers,'" husband Devon said.
Jasmine now feels blessed for life, her new purpose, and of course her family.
"I feel like my purpose here is to educate people on the risk of heart attacks and just to be their own lifesaver when it comes to advocating for yourself. Please listen to the signs. I can't say it enough," she said. "Don't ever let somebody write your story. You write your own story. Just being in this position to be able to talk about my story and having this new purpose in life, it makes me happy about my outlook, to be honest. And I haven't been happy in a long time after this whole ordeal. So I'm just happy and optimistic, and I'm excited. I'm super excited.”
This past October, just five months after her open-heart surgery, Jasmine Storrs walked three miles at the Richmond Heart Walk and received a lifestyle change award.
She also spoke at the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women luncheon last week on February 23, 2024, and was recognized for her comeback story.
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