Four case studies

February 2, 2005

Heart disease survivors clockwise from top left: Margaret Sanesky, Connie Burt, Belinda Jenkins and Jean Moroney (AP FOR NEWSDAY (SANESKY); LEE S. WEISSMAN PHOTO: (BURT); NEWSDAY PHOTOS/MICHAEL E. ACH, DAVID L. POKRESS (JENKINS, MORONEY))

Case study #1: Margaret Sanesky
It never occurred to Margaret Sanesky she was having a heart attack. She was at church distributing the communion wine and thought she had a terrible case of acid indigestion. "When I got home, my husband took one look at me and said he was taking me to the hospital," said Sanesky, who lives in Huntington Station and was 59 when she had the heart attack two years ago.

Sanesky had never been warned of her risk for heart disease, despite a strong family history -- her mother had suffered numerous mini-strokes and at least two heart attacks when she was about Sanesky's age.

"Like a lot of other women, I worried about getting my yearly mammogram, but heart disease -- I never gave it a second thought," she said. -- Roni Rabin

Case study #2: Jean Moroney
Even when women go to the doctor complaining about chest pain, they may not get taken seriously. That was Jean Moroney's experience. Moroney, who lives in Selden, was 52 in 1997 when she had a heart attack. "The whole year before that, I had been going to my primary care doctor constantly complaining about chest pain; I kept telling him 'I feel like I'm having a heart attack,'" she said.

The warning signs were all there, she said. "I was a walking time bomb: I smoked, I was overweight, I had high cholesterol and my mother died very young of heart disease." But her doctor, she said, "treated me with Xanax and Zantac," pills for anxiety and acid indigestion.

Ultimately she underwent triple bypass surgery and subsequently required stents to open two post-surgical blockages. -- Roni Rabin

Case study #3: Belinda Jenkins
Black women and Mexican-American women are at even greater risk than white women, in part because they have more underlying diseases such as hypertension and diabetes that set the stage. Belinda Jenkins had a heart attack two years ago, at 26. The West Hempstead woman, who has childhood diabetes, had classic symptoms: extreme tightening in the chest, shortness of breath and nausea.

But when an ambulance took her to a community hospital, she wasn't examined for heart disease until results of a toxicology test came back negative -- delaying by 40 minutes her transfer to a larger medical center. Three days later, she underwent quintuple bypass surgery. -- Roni Rabin

Case study #4: Connie Burt
Connie Burt works as a medical secretary in the cardiology unit at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, but never thought she'd be back as a patient. "I didn't know I was at risk," said the Cambria Heights resident. Her only symptom, a burning sensation in her chest, sometimes forced her to rest after walking 10 or 15 steps. "But I just thought I was having acid reflux and never associated it with a heart problem," she said.

Before she underwent elective toe surgery in 1998, her doctor noticed a slightly abnormal electrocardiogram. Further tests revealed a 98 percent blockage in a major artery. Doctors inserted a catheter and a cardiac stent. Now, Burt said, "I take an aspirin every day. I try to watch what I eat. I've lost weight. I'm just trying to take care of myself." -- Bryn Nelson