Susan Lucci: 'I didn't realize how close I came to a fatal heart attack'

Soap-opera icon Susan Lucci, who underwent emergency heart surgery twice in recent times and now advocates for the American Heart Association, is urging women to note advice she wishes she had heeded herself.

"I would hear that heart disease is the Number One killer of women, but that went in one ear and out the other," Lucci, 76, tells People magazine in its new issue. "But now I get it."

The star, a longtime Garden City resident raised there and in Elmont, suffered serious heart blockages in October 2018 and in January of last year. The first, a near-fatal 90% and 70% respective blockage in two of her heart's main arteries, came as a surprise to the otherwise healthy actor, who practices daily Pilates and eats a heart-healthy, primarily Mediterranean diet of plant-based food, olive oil and moderate seafood, dairy and poultry. "I didn't realize how close I came to a fatal heart attack," she reflects.

Her heart condition turned out to be genetic, "hereditary from my dad's side," Lucci learned. Because of this, "It's important for everyone to know their family history. … I don't think that I ever mentioned my dad's family history to a doctor."

She previously has described being at the Tory Burch boutique at the Americana Manhasset shopping center when she began to experience pain "like an elephant pressing down on my chest." Lucci checked into Catholic Health St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Roslyn, where her longtime cardiologist, Dr. Richard Shlofmitz, installed two stents.

But then, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and after an overindulgence in "comfort food … not my normal way of eating,” the Daytime Emmy Award-winner again felt chest and jaw pain and shortness of breath — yet hesitated to seek medical attention. "[A]fter telling women for three years to not be afraid to call the doctor and to put themselves on their to-do list, I reverted back to all those things," she tells People.

Learning she had an 80% artery blockage caused by cholesterol, she had another stent installed in January 2022. "I almost wasn't going to speak about it, I was so ashamed of myself," Lucci says. "But it's a reminder to be vigilant."

She suffered a setback when her heart became broken metaphorically two months later, with the death of her husband of 53 years, Helmut Huber. "After that, nothing seemed important, my health or anything else," Lucci says. "I didn't care about anything else."

Yet now, after almost a year of working through grief, "I feel good," she says. "I lost the love of my life and that's been awful, but I have friends who make me laugh and keep me out and about, and I'm determined to keep putting one foot in front of the other."