Julia Allen, a young and vibrant wife and mother of three was only 44 years old when she sat up in a hospital bed realizing that she had just survived, not one, but two heart attacks on the same day: April 15, 2013.
“[During the ordeal] I was thinking about all the other things that were going on. Who was going to cook dinner tonight? The boys won’t have anyone to help them with their homework,” Allen shares as any mom would. “I got this conference call at work; who’s going to do that? I hadn’t gone to the grocery store … all that stuff was going through my mind. If I have to go sit in the hospital for four hours and they tell me nothing’s wrong, I just wasted so much time. I just need to go home and lay down for about an hour, take some ibuprofen and I’ll be fine … that is honestly what I was thinking.”
That was it. It was then she made a promise to herself that from that point forward, here life would change. Since recovering, she has also made it her mission to educate as many women as possible—especially African-American women—so that they will not make the same mistakes she made and suffer unnecessarily.
Allen, who was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, and now lives in Charlotte, N.C., was recently chosen as one of nine 2015 national American Heart Association spokeswomen from across the country and is letting her story be heard. “Unfortunately it’s not a group that you want to be selected for because you have to have a heart problem to get into it,” she jokes. “[Each of us has] different heart abnormalities, from…
…heart attacks to stroke to congenital heart defects … [but] I’m excited to use this opportunity to help other women.”
According to Allen, there are factors you can and cannot change. Some of those you can’t change are, obviously, your age, race and family history.
Even though she is relatively young, Allen’s family history tells a shocking story. Her two parents had heart disease; one of them also had diabetes, which increased the risk even further. In addition, three of her four grandparents suffered from heart disease.
And what’s even more disturbing is that tests on her children after her heart attack showed that her eldest son, then only 12, had high cholesterol—at age 12! The same child who competed in track and field and football, among other sports and who was one who was considered healthy. With that new information, the family is now managing through healthy eating.
“Having high cholesterol at this young age, you’re going to start getting some buildup in those arteries. My son could have had a heart attack at 20. Who knows? Gone unwatched, who knows what might have happened to him?” she asks.
Don’t let that question go unnoticed. Find out more information about Heart Health here.
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