February is American Heart Month

February is American Heart Month, and we are sharing the story of NHCS employee Caress Clegg, who survived a heart attack on her 34th birthday and advocates for women to know the warning signs and care for their ❤️ health.

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For her 34th birthday, Caress Clegg just wanted to have a quiet dinner out, no fanfare.

That, she says on reflection, should have been the first red flag.

“People have told me I celebrate more than the Pharaohs do when it comes to my birthday,” she said. “But on this particular one, I was just like, ‘Well, let's just do a low-key dinner.’”

She took her young daughter Rory to Cape Fear Seafood Company, one of her favorite restaurants, and as the meal progressed, things got weird.

As she cut into her filet mignon, she started to feel disoriented, and a fogginess cloaked everything around her.

She could hear Rory talking to her, but whatever she was saying wasn’t landing, didn’t make sense.

Then she felt pain in her chest — “I compared it to the worst heartburn” — and she fumbled in her purse looking for Tums, thinking the acidic sangria she was drinking must have set it off.

She doesn’t remember leaving most of the filet mignon at the table, and she can’t really explain how she was able to pay the bill and get Rory to the car.

“All I could hear was the pain and the pounding and the pressure,” she said. “It felt like someone had just taken a brick and it was inside my skin and they were pressing that brick right down on my chest.”

Directly over her heart.

As she started the drive from Porter’s Neck to her home in Sunset Park, she realized she wasn’t going to make it on her own.

“Hey Siri,” she managed to get out, “call Mommy.”

Caress’s mom is a nurse, and she met her in a parking lot, got her home, gave her some heartburn and blood pressure medication, and stayed the night.

Every sign that Caress was having a heart attack was there, but the fact that neither she nor her mother could see it speaks to how hard it is for women — especially younger women and women of color — to recognize their susceptibility.

“It just wasn’t registering for us. My mom knows the rate at which heart disease affects Black women, she knows we're more likely to die of heart disease than any other disease,” Caress said. “She knows my dad died of heart disease. She knows her mom died of a heart attack.”

But it was her daughter’s 34th birthday.

34.

She didn’t allow her mind to go there.

The next day the pain had diminished but Caress went to see her physician assistant anyway. She’s conscientious like that.

They ran a battery of tests, and Caress was at dinner with her best friend that night — trying again to celebrate her birthday — when the doctor called with the results. Her blood work showed she was having a heart attack.

“I think if I wasn't a melanin queen, then all the color would have left my body,” she said. “It did not feel real. It felt like I was in the movie watching this experience happen.”

Her friend raced her to the hospital as she called her mom again.

This time saying, “Mommy, I’m having a heart attack.”

Covid restrictions meant her time in the hospital left her mom in the waiting room and her alone with her thoughts.

“I knew my dad had died of heart disease at 36. He didn't get a wake up call; he was here one night, gone in the morning,” she said. “So all the thoughts running through my head are, ‘Is my will in order? Is Rory going to be safe? Did I get enough life insurance coverage? Who’s going to take care of my dog?”

She is one of the lucky ones.

Her treatment was successful, and in the months after her heart attack she cut back on alcohol, took up walking, and adopted a heart-healthy diet. It wasn’t always easy.

“Food is my love language, and this was in November and coming up on what I call eating season,” she laughed.

She also made changes that were a little less tangible: Taking time off from her work as a supervisor in the Communications Division when she needs to safeguard her physical and mental health; leaving work at work and giving her complete focus to Rory when she’s with her; and challenging herself to live in a way she might have feared before.

Last summer she and Rory took a spontaneous road trip to Asheville, hiking in the mountains and taking the scenic way home.

Then they went to Washington, D.C., walking around the reflecting pool to the bottom of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

“Stairs petrify me,” she said. “The time where I’m reminded the most that I had a heart attack is when I take the stairs, because no matter no matter how much progress I've made, I get so winded.”

But she took Rory’s hand, and together they climbed them.

Go to your check-ups, she advises. Know your risks and symptoms. Care for your body and mind — especially if you’re a Black woman.

“When you look at African-American women, there’s been this idea that we can endure and our bodies are built to take anything,” she said. “We as Black women don't have to be so strong all the time. Our bodies are just as breakable as anyone else.”

But also, she said, don’t be afraid to experience life fully, because as her wake-up call showed her, nothing is promised.

“I have to be more mindful in the steps I take to prevent another episode from occurring,” she said. “But I can't let it burden me, because if it does stop me from living, then what was the point of me being able to survive it.”