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Donna

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Donna couldn’t believe she was having a heart attack.

She thought she knew the signs. She saw them every day on a refrigerator magnet—chest pain, headache, profuse sweating and nausea. But those are men’s signs, not necessarily the signs women have. Women’s signs are often more subtle.

“I had been extremely tired,” recalls the 45-year-old substitute teacher from Murfreesboro. “But quite frankly, what mother of two who is working part-time, has a husband and is trying to take care of a house, isn’t tired? You know, it’s very easy to make excuses. But if I had I known the signs, I think I would have paid more attention.”

Donna looks back now and realizes the warnings were there. Trouble sleeping. A constant feeling of exhaustion. Indigestion. In fact, two weeks before her heart attack, Donna told her mom, “Mama, I must be crunching my teeth during the night. My jaw is just killing me.”

On July 6, 2008, the night before her daughter Carly’s 13th birthday, Donna was upstairs doing household chores. “I bent down to pick up the laundry. Then I stood up. I was “Oh, ooh, whew, man, I think I pulled a muscle. Halfway downstairs, I was like, ‘Okay, this is hurting. This is not okay.”

“I dropped the laundry on the couch. My husband Greg said, ‘Donna, are you okay?’ By this time, my left arm felt like someone had hit it with a metal bat. I said, ‘I don’t think I am.’ He said, ‘Get in the car.’ ”

Greg rushed Donna to the Middle Tennessee Medical Center, part of Saint Thomas Health Services. “From the time we got to there” she described, “everyone was unbelievably fantastical. I barely had a chance to sit down and fill out the paperwork. And literally they were calling me back.”

“Honest to goodness, it looked like something you see on TV. Everybody kicked into action. Suddenly, I had three or four people working around me. They were flying around, dumping pills “take this; take this.” And then I recognized one of the nurses. Lisa. ‘Look, Greg, there’s Reba’—cause she looks like Reba McIntyre. I was joking, but the pain was there, without a doubt.

“I looked at Greg and said, ‘I cannot believe I’m having a heart attack.’ Then “Nurse Reba” said, ‘You will love Dr. Mioton. He is one of the best.’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ And she said, ‘That means he can not only diagnose it; he can fix it. You don’t have to go anywhere.’ And she was right. When Dr. Mioton came in, I knew from the very get-go that I was gonna be okay.”

They saved Donna’s life at Middle Tennessee Hospital. She’s so impressed with Dr. Mioton, she carries his cards wherever she goes, in case someone needs a cardiologist.

As she was wheeled into the cath lab, her husband said, “Donna, what can I do for you?” And she said, “Call the Bunko Babes—that’s eight of my friends—and tell them to start a prayer chain. Then Nurse Reba leaned down and whispered, “I’ll say a prayer for you too.’” As she recalls the moment, a sob catches in Donna’s throat, “It was the sweetest thing. I had a peace wash over me like I have never have had before.

“I talked to God going in there. I said, ‘Lord, I’m not ready to leave this life, but if it’s my time. I’m not afraid.’ And I wasn’t. Like I said, I had that peace’. That’s what I remember lying there thinking. ‘I’m not ready to leave my life.’”

The doctors put in a stent in Donna’s left arterial descending artery, the one they call “the widowmaker.” It was 100 percent blocked. “One stent in one big artery. You know, the funny thing is Dr. Mioton said, ‘The rest of your heart looks great.’ Can you believe it? One silly old artery caused all that trouble.”

For the record, Donna is a plus-size woman with a personality to match. Throughout her whole ordeal, she never lost her sense of humor. When she came out of surgery, she looked around and asked everyone, “Where’s the party? And when the doctors were about to insert the catheter, she teased, “Okay, while you’re up in there, can you suck some of the fat out?”

Three days later Donna went home to her husband Greg and her children, Carly and Connor. Soon she was back singing in her church choir. “I’ve been singing since I was little. Music is my ministry. Music can reach people when nothing else can. Music is non-threatening and food for the soul.

“Last Easter I sang a duet, ‘In A Heartbeat.’ And the chorus of the song goes, ‘In a heartbeat, everything changed.’ It was talking about the resurrection of Christ. Well,” she reflected, “little did I know three months later, ‘in a heartbeat,’ my life would change tremendously.”

As Donna shares her story, she turns philosophical. “How in the world I’m walking around here is truly by the grace of God. I allowed the busyness of life to get in the way of me taking care of mine. And it still does--to this very day, it still does. But I’m working on it . . . I’m working on it.”

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