Go Red Campaign (As Seen On Eyewitness News at Five)
By: Leanne Gregg NBC News
Updated: February 1, 2013
Spending time with her twenty-one-year-old daughter is something michelle burke was told would never happen ...
Fifteen years ago she was a busy mother of three. Her usually perky personality was bogged down by extreme fatigue.
Knowing her sister had died at age nineteen from a heart condition, she felt it was time to see if she also had a troubled heart.
"I went to actually 2 different doctors and they said to me, it's just because you have young children, it's your season in life, when they grow up you won't be tired anymore." Said Michelle Burke, Heart Disease Patient
Months later a different doctor agreed to take a look at michelle's heart, and when they called with the results -- she was told she had only a handful of years left.
"My doctor called and said Michelle, your heart is in terrible shape. You need to go to the hospital tomorrow at 7 am and be prepared to stay a while."
In the time since Michelle's diagnosis the American Heart Association's Go Red for women campaign has made great strides in raising awareness of women's heart problems, for both women and their doctors.
That increased awareness likely saved Mary Leah's life.
"I think I would have been a 30 year old mom pushing a stroller, and they would have found out post-mortum that I had heart disease." said Mary Leah
Like Michelle, Mary Leah was also a busy mother who was constantly tired. But when she told her doctor about her mother's heart condition, he took her family history seriously and immediately ordered additional tests.
"It was pretty world shattering and life altering to find my heart was functioning at 10% of what it should be." said Mary Leah Coco
Both women are living with their condition rather than succumbing to it -- something they say wouldn't have been possible without the awareness and research go red has created.
90-percent of people who registered with the Go Red Campaign made a healthy lifestyle change, like changing their eating or exercise habits or getting their cholesterol checked
Click Here for the Go Red Campaign
Fifteen years ago she was a busy mother of three. Her usually perky personality was bogged down by extreme fatigue.
Knowing her sister had died at age nineteen from a heart condition, she felt it was time to see if she also had a troubled heart.
"I went to actually 2 different doctors and they said to me, it's just because you have young children, it's your season in life, when they grow up you won't be tired anymore." Said Michelle Burke, Heart Disease Patient
Months later a different doctor agreed to take a look at michelle's heart, and when they called with the results -- she was told she had only a handful of years left.
"My doctor called and said Michelle, your heart is in terrible shape. You need to go to the hospital tomorrow at 7 am and be prepared to stay a while."
In the time since Michelle's diagnosis the American Heart Association's Go Red for women campaign has made great strides in raising awareness of women's heart problems, for both women and their doctors.
That increased awareness likely saved Mary Leah's life.
"I think I would have been a 30 year old mom pushing a stroller, and they would have found out post-mortum that I had heart disease." said Mary Leah
Like Michelle, Mary Leah was also a busy mother who was constantly tired. But when she told her doctor about her mother's heart condition, he took her family history seriously and immediately ordered additional tests.
"It was pretty world shattering and life altering to find my heart was functioning at 10% of what it should be." said Mary Leah Coco
Both women are living with their condition rather than succumbing to it -- something they say wouldn't have been possible without the awareness and research go red has created.
90-percent of people who registered with the Go Red Campaign made a healthy lifestyle change, like changing their eating or exercise habits or getting their cholesterol checked
Click Here for the Go Red Campaign
