The last thing I remember before being wheeled into the operating room at St. Joseph Mercy in Ann Arbor, were instructions about a breathing tube and soft restraints.

The next thing was a nurse in the middle of the night, flipping on the bright overhead lights, telling me they could take the tube out now and remove the restraints. What tube? What restraints? Have they already done the surgery? And I made it! Now what? My throat was so sore I couldn’t get my questions out. That’s why we have husbands and daughters.

While I was in never-never land, a team of surgeons had cracked open my chest, put my heart on by-pass, and repaired three pretty good size blockages in my cardiac arteries. They also left behind a leg-long scar marking where they’d gone in to retrieve some good arteries. That was 18 years ago this past December. The scars are still there, but not quite so ugly and barely visible.

We are constantly being told that women tend not to take care of their hearts. They tend not to listen to our bodies are trying to tell us. I was exceptionally lucky. I had a wonderful young woman as my primary care physician, and when I started mentioning a few symptoms like pain between my shoulder blades while on the treadmill, shortness of breath, etc. She immediately placed a call to a cardiologist. Within a week I’d had a heart catheterization where some bright young person makes a small slit in your groin and slips in a catheter and some dye so he/she and you and watch what’s going on as the dye heads for the myriad of blood vessels around your heart. I could watch it on television, but in those days I needed my glasses, which they’d taken away from me. I could tell by the expression on the cardiologists face and the conversation with whoever was watching that they didn’t like what they saw. They explained everything to me. Could you absorb the information, lying flat on a cold table, with a tube running up to your heart?

When I was more or less coherent, it was all explained to my husband and me. This time it made sense but still didn’t sound like how I wanted to spend Christmas week. But it did sound serious and needing to be fixed. It was fixed, and whatever they used to put me back together again must be great stuff to have lasted this long. Now I hear they glue your sternum back together instead of staples.

Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for women. We tend to ignore that chest pain that feels like indigestion. We figure the shortness of breath is because we were carrying too many packages. If something like this happened to a spouse or friend, we’d be after them in a minute to get help.

National Women’s Heart Week is Feb. 1-7, and you’ll be hearing a lot about heart disease and the warning signs. For your own health, and for the peace of mind of those around you, please listen to the information and see your doctor just to be sure. It just might add at least18 years to your life.

Readers may e-mail Robson at outreachnc@connectnc.com