When Heart Disease Runs in the Family

What you can do with the cardio cards you’ve been dealt

- Charlotte Hilton Andersen and Karla Walsh

“I HAD NO IDEA what was going on,” recalls Jenny Petz, a mother of two. She remembers thinking at the time, Why is my mother sitting on my chest to talk to me? She knew that made no sense, but it was the only explanation she could think of for the extreme chest pressure and heaviness she felt as she lay on the nursery floor in 2008, drifting in and out of consciousness. Later she learnt that her mother was there, but she wasn’t talking to Petz. She was on the phone with a 911 operator, summoning an ambulance. Petz—young, fit, and healthy— had given birth eight days earlier. At age 32, she was having a heart attack.

An EKG at the hospital revealed the severity of Petz’s condition. Her heart attack had been caused by spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). “It’s as scary as it sounds,” she says. “One of the main arteries to my heart exploded.” Another artery to Petz’s heart was 90 per cent blocked, and when the pregnancy put extra strain on her heart, the clogged artery increased the work for the remaining arteries, and the extra pressure eventually became too much.