The story behind a misunderstood and often misdiagnosed heart condition that's affecting Canadian women.

Sudi Barre is a young, healthy, fit woman who, immediately after giving birth, suffered a heart attack. Then she had seven more.

- SADAF AHSAN

In the months leading up to the birth of her first child, Sudi Barre, a 36-year-old former social worker who lives in Edmonton, was told by her doctors that she was a “textbook ideal pregnancy.” Healthy and fit, she was still working close to her due date and even hiking up until a week before. “I was feeling uncomfortable with how comfortable I was,” she recalls now with a small, knowing smile.

But on a warm morning in August 2017, while recovering in hospital from an emergency Caesarean, Barre began to experience excruciating pain down her neck, between her shoulders and down her arm to her elbow. She couldn’t breathe, and she was worried she wouldn’t survive to hold her child. At first, she was told by a nurse to “walk it off.” But eventually, the attending physician ordered an electrocardiogram (ECG), which revealed Barre had experienced a heart attack. Doctors placed a stent in her heart, but things only grew worse as she then experienced what she estimates was at least another seven heart attacks over several weeks. The medication—along with the pain and fear—was copious.