365 | 1 WomenHeart

I am starting my 365 Project today, where I take at least one photo a day for one year.

I chose today, as opposed to Jan 1, or any other day, because today is my anniversary.
Five years ago today, I had a heart attack.

It was the night before my husband and I were suppose to go on vacation – and for me, this was going to be my first real grown-up vacation: a few years out of graduate school; working and living in one place for longer than one year; not just a long weekend but a week long trip; somewhere I had never been before; not couch surfing with family and friends… But we didn’t make it on that trip.

It started as pains in my chest, like heartburn. I lay down on the bed thinking that it would go away after a while. Then I had a pain in my right arm from about the elbow up to the shoulder and up my neck. I gradually became aware of a pressure in my back, like behind where the heartburn was. Some of it felt like a tingling radiating pulse… like the pain was running along a nerve, gave me the sense of being nervous. We decided that I should go to the ER in case it was something more than heartburn, since we were leaving the next morning. When we got to the hospital, the nurse immediately took me back to a room, hooked me up to an EKG machine and I was told by the doctor that I was having a heart attack.
I am Asian, female, and I was 32 years old.

If you would like to know more about women with heart disease please visit WomenHeart, it is a wonderful source of information and support.

I am grateful; in a moment of happiness emanating in blazing rays; in grief and sorrow unbearably painful and never ending; in every new adventure; in a thought “..today, I will start a new project..” because I am living.

One of these days I will make it to the Berkshires.