VA NY Harbor Healthcare System

Emergency Room physician Nancy Lutwak, MD, often speaks about women experiencing atypical symptoms when they are having a heart attack. This really means symptoms that are very different than those men describe, she explained. As clinicians participating in the Wear Red Day Event held a VA’s Manhattan Campus on Friday, February 3, both Dr. Lutwak and Cardiologist Dr. Rosemarie Gambetta were among other clinicians who spent considerable time talking with Staff and Veterans about their cardiac health. At the Brooklyn Campus, many stopped to talk with clinicians and enter for a chance to win a Heart healthy basket.

At 63, Army Veteran Rhodella Wright has had four heart attacks. Wright, a retired LPN, described her symptoms in each crisis — and, they were not typical heart the signals of a possible heart attack. In the period surrounding her first and fourth heart attacks, for example, Wright described feeling weak, walking far more slowly than is usual for her, shortness of breath, heavy sweating, diarrhea and “slight tingling in one hand, but nothing like radiating pain.”

Walking with a friend on her way to church, she was feeling the warning signs of what was to be her fourth heart attack. Wright told a friend she was determined to go to church “to pray for somebody.” But her friend realized the urgency of the situation. “She said ‘no!' and called 'Taxi," recalled Wright, of the incident that brought her to VA’s Manhattan Campus for ongoing treatment.

The 6th Annual Wear Red Day Program was open and free to female Veterans and to VA staff. Clinicians took measures of blood sugar blood pressure levels along with other numbers that need to be watched and managed for optimum health. Staff and Veterans who came to the event to think about their risk for cardiac disease, keep their numbers within acceptable limits and recognize warning signs of diabetes and other health conditions that can lead to heart disease and stroke.