North Shore-LIJ Goes Red for Women [VIDEO]

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade; but what do you do when life gives you heart disease?

For the executives, doctors and staff members at , the answer is to recognize the threat of cardiovascular disease, learn how to avoid and fight it and to use humor.

During the ninth annual Wear Red for Women Day at the LIJ Medical Center’s Gurwin Teaching Center Friday, actress Carol Lempert and actor Jacob Moore from the Events of the Heart organization performed the familiar sounding “Angina Monologues,” a humorous and heart-felt take on women’s experience with heart disease.

Because heart disease is the number one killer of American women, claiming the lives of nearly 500,000 women a year, the North Shore-LIJ Health System has become a signature sponsor of Go Red for Women. Together with the American Heart Association, the medical center is committed to fighting the preventable disease and providing lifesaving research, education and quality patient care.

LIJ EKG technician Michele deCoteau realized she was in trouble last November, going to the emergency room instead of brushing off her chest discomfort.

“I came in one morning and I went down for breakfast and I had spinach and turkey sausage and coffee, it was like a ‘no-no,’ and two bites in I thought it was a little too greasy and it felt like it wasn’t being digested,” deCoteau explained. “I went upstairs and sitting there working that feeling was still not going away so I (asked a co-worker) to do an EKG on me, but we couldn’t find a bed so I just went to the ER.”

Going to the emergency room could be what saved deCoteau’s life, who said if she was home at the time she probably would have just taken an Advil and went to bed.

“My heart rate was 205 and I didn’t know that at the time,” she said, whose heart rate eventually went down to a still high 160-something. “I’ve never seen that and I’ve been in cardiology almost 20 years.”

DeCoteau was diagnosed with Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) which she described as extra cells from birth that mutated into an accessory pathway in her chest.

“Because it’s shorter than the normal pathway, it loops around really quickly so when your heart beat jumps track from the normal, then it speeds up,” deCoteau said. “So they gave me an ablation, which is a cardiovascular procedure that burns off the accessory pathway so it has nothing to derail to.” This was all done within three days.

“When I tell you that my co-workers, they were so good because I wasn’t prepared for anything,” she said. “One brought me all my toiletries…and I just thank God because any other place maybe the stress [would have made it worse].”

DeCoteau could have just brushed off her initial feeling of undigested food — a feeling many of us feel from time to time — but she knew it was uncomfortable to the point of not normal.

“Sometimes you can’t just ignore signs, you know?” she said. “I’m fine, I’m very vigilant right now, but I’m fine.” 

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