Heart disease a women’s issue, too
By Amy Lavalley Post-Tribune correspondent February 1, 2012 2:04PM
Nicole Caylor, a Valparaiso native living in Chesterton, speaks about the heart attack she endured two years ago during the Go Red for Women American Heart Association breakfast in the Harre Ballroom on the Valparasio University campus in Valparaiso, Ind. Wednesday February 1, 2012. Caylor was in the Army at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri when she had the heart attack. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media
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For more on the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, go to www.goredforwomen.org.
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Updated: March 3, 2012 11:36AM
VALPARAISO — Two years ago, Nicole Caylor was 29 and in her fourth week of basic training with the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood in southwest Missouri.
She’d pushed herself physically past her male counterparts and was exhausted the next day, and figured the exertion was the reason. But she started feeling nauseous and pain.
The Valparaiso native now living in Chesterton was having a heart attack.
Her military peers dismissed her complaints, setting off a nightmarish scenario of a medical transport during a blizzard, a misdiagnosis at a regional hospital and, finally, heart surgery and the diagnosis of a cardiac electrical pathway syndrome.
Caylor experienced an 11 percent muscle loss in her heart because of the ordeal. She received a medical discharge from the army.
“This isn’t something that happens just to our dads, just to our uncles and just to our grandfathers. It can happen to us, and to our daughters,” she told a full ballroom in the Harre Union on the Valparaiso University campus, during Wednesday’s annual Go Red for Women American Heart Association breakfast.
Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the country, said Dawn Collins, executive committee chairwoman for this year’s Go Red event.
“We all know someone who’s been affected,” she said. “If we all work together, we can prevent heart disease and stroke.”
Keynote speaker Maggie Wilderotter, chief executive officer of Frontier Communications, credited a healthy lifestyle established when she was a child growing up on the New Jersey shore in the 1960s with warding off heart disease.
Her father got her and her sisters up every morning to exercise, and her parents emphasized healthy eating habits and an active lifestyle.
“Childhood lessons and parental guidance really help us make the right decisions, even as we grow older,” she said.
Dedicated to a career in technology, Wilderotter said she balanced the demands of motherhood and a job that requires extensive travel with power walks to reduce stress, massages, a solid support system, taking time for herself, and the occasional glass of wine -- helped by the fact that her husband owns a vineyard.
“I hope everyone in this room knows you are a gift to someone, and knows too much to become a statistic,” she said.
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