Marine Corps Base Quantico -- Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United States and since 1984, more women die from it than men.

The Quantico Officers Spouses Organization (QOSO) held a Red Dress Gala Feb. 4 to raise awareness of heart health in women. February is Heart Health Month and Feb. 5 is National Wear Red for Women Day. According to Dr. Swati Grover, a family physician at Naval Health Clinic Quantico, heart disease usually presents with atypical symptoms in women so knowledge and early action is crucial to saving lives.

“Tonight we’re going to light it up with knowledge,” said Holly Vega, QOSO president.

Military spouses dressed in shades of red from tomato to burgundy gathered at Quarters One, the home of Marine Corps Combat Development Command’s commanding general. They enjoyed food and drinks provided by QOSO board members and gift bags stuffed with goodies provided by the Military Officers Association of America, jewelry and accessories company Stella and Dot, the USO, the Naval Health Clinic Quantico Behavioral Health Department, the MCCS Voluntary Education Center, Chick-Fil-A and many spouse’s home businesses.

At the heart of the evening, however, were testimonies by two Quantico wives living with cardiovascular disease and injury.

The first, who asked that her name not be published, spoke about sustaining a vertebral artery dissection — a rip in one of the arteries leading into the brain — after the birth of her daughter in 2009.

“This is a great topic for our community because it usually hits the young and fit,” the spouse wrote in an e-mail. “The Olympic skier Sarah Burke died from one. It usually happens from lifting too much weight over the head, extreme neck extension, jolting of the neck and trauma — or in my case, giving birth.”

At the gala, the woman recalled resting on the sofa 10 days after giving birth. She turned her head to speak to her husband and felt a jolt of pain in her head that knocked her to the ground.

She woke later that night with the worst headache of her life, a droopy eyelid and a dilated pupil. The emergency room staff that night and again several days later assured her it was just a migraine.

“I was 32 years old and had no risk of heart disease, so they weren’t looking for that,” she said.

But she knew something was wrong and continued to visit doctors until finally, after a battery of tests, they discovered a three-inch blood clot that was on its way to her brain.

“It was inoperable,” the woman said. “There was nothing they could do.”

She was sent home with instructions not to lift her baby or move her neck for six months, during which time they said the blood clot would either dissolve or she would suffer a stroke. The clot did dissolve, but damage to the artery was slow to heal and she still has lingering nerve damage and restrictions to how she can exercise.

“The take-away from my story is that heart and stroke health affects everyone,” the woman said. “We need to lift the age restriction from it.”

“There are two things you can do for me,” she continued. “The first is be brave and be your own advocate. The second is to not ignore your symptoms! I know that especially in this room, we’re so often busy and flying solo. We’re usually the new girl on the block and we don’t want to impose. But this is more important.”

Carrie Murray read aloud a written testimony from a second military spouse, Jen F., who wasn’t able to be at the event due to a family commitment.

In July of 2012, her husband, a pilot, was deployed and she was three and a half weeks away from her fourth child’s due date.

“I knew something was different with this pregnancy,” Jen said. “I felt constantly short of breath. I felt this pressure in my chest and my heart raced at night. And I was exhausted.”

She mentioned her symptoms to her OB but the doctor told her they were common pregnancy side effects, especially in the summer heat of South Carolina.

“But in my gut, I knew this was not normal for me,” Jen said.

She finally saw a cardiologist who did an echocardiogram and told her he would call with results in a few days. That evening, she went into labor.

“I’ve never been so scared,” she remembered. “I couldn’t breathe. They kept giving me oxygen and I would fall asleep after pushes. After my daughter was born, I begged them not to give her to me, because I was afraid I would drop her.”

She remembers hearing the nurses saying “she’s just depressed because her husband missed the birth.”

But on the car ride home from the hospital, she got a call from the cardiologist, who told her she was in heart failure. Her condition was peripartum cardiomyopathy, a deterioration of cardiac function caused by pregnancy. A normal heart beats at what is known as an “ejection fraction” of 55 to 75 percent. Jen’s was beating at 35 to 40 percent.

“It was then that I made the stupidest decision of my life,” Jen F. said.

She decided not to tell her husband or anyone in his command about her condition because she didn’t want the knowledge to affect his job performance or promotion potential. The decision caused problems in her marriage when her husband returned from deployment and led to her developing depression, anxiety, and chronic pain issues.

Jen said her marriage recovered and she manages her heart condition through medication and her stress through yoga. But she implores other military wives not to keep their problems to themselves as she did.

“Stress is as bad for your heart as diet and cholesterol,” Jen wrote in her testimony. “Please ask for help if you need it and accept it when it’s offered. If Mom isn’t OK, no one will be OK.”

Grover then gave the medical perspective, describing the difference between heart disease in women and men. Women are more likely to have symptoms other than the classic chest pain, such as nausea, indigestion, fatigue and shortness of breath. Women have more silent heart attacks — or heart attacks with no symptoms at all — and heart disease in women is not as easy to treat with common procedures such as stenting. Younger women are more likely to die from heart attack than men.

Awareness and prevention are the best way to fight these statistics, Grover said.

“If you just walk for 30 minutes five times a week, you decrease your risk of heart attack by 50 percent,” she said.

For more information about heart disease in women, visit https://www.goredforwomen.org/.

— Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.com