At home, Mr. Sawyer was so tired he could barely carry the baby up the stairs. She also suffered from her breathing difficulties during her sleep. “She felt like she was drowning,” she recalls. (Difficulty breathing is a common symptom of heart failure because it causes fluid to build up in the lungs.)
Three days later, Sawyer suspected that it wasn’t just postpartum symptoms, but that she had given birth twice before without these problems. Sawyer went to the emergency room to have her checked. “Her heart was racing and she felt dizzy,” she recalled.
Doctors noticed that her blood pressure was abnormally high, with a systolic blood pressure of about 180 and a diastolic blood pressure of about 120. (The normal blood pressure range for adults is approximately 120 systolic and 80 diastolic, or 120/80. ah. High blood pressure can occur at the same time as heart failure. ) She also had fluid in her chest (which explains her breathing problems at night). These symptoms led doctors to diagnose Sawyer as being in the early stages of heart failure. She received diuretics to reduce her fluid buildup and medication to lower her blood pressure.Five After the emergency room incident, Sawyer saw a cardiologist regularly and took medication to lower her blood pressure. She says these measures led to a full recovery by the time of her checkup a year later.
After the initial diagnosis, Sawyer learned there was a family history of heart disease on his father’s side. “I didn’t know her father’s family, so I wasn’t aware of the risk,” she explains. (A woman’s chances of developing cardiovascular disease can increase by as much as 70% if either of her parents has a history of early-onset cardiovascular disease.)6)
“I was exhausted by the little things…even just picking up my kids.”
Chevonne Dixon, 37, started having heart problems at age 19, when her doctor discovered she had a heart murmur during a routine checkup. “My mitral valve was prolapsed,” she tells herself. This meant that the valves that ensure blood flows in and out of the heart in the correct direction were not closing properly.
After undergoing surgery to replace a valve, Dixon’s heart had been functioning normally for nearly a decade until 2015, when she noticed that she felt unusually tired all the time. “She started feeling tired from doing little things, like cleaning the house, walking, or even just picking up her kids,” she recalls. Ms. Dixon was so exhausted that it was difficult to commute to the office, and she had no appetite. “When she ate small amounts of food, she was full all day and didn’t feel hungry,” she says.7
