NEWS & IDEAS

The time of her life

POSTED ON 01 29 2012 BY Caroline Connell
UNDER Survivor Stories

Jennifer MacLean had no time to take care of herself. She was putting in about 60 hours a week as a bookkeeper for A.A. Munro Insurance in Sydney, NS, and juggling her responsibilities as single mother to her 12-year-old son, Avery “It meant a lot of stopping for McDonald’s or pizza, or anything else that was quick and easy to grab,” she says. As for her efforts to walk a couple of times a week with friends at the office, “It was hit and miss; some days we’d get out, some days we wouldn’t.”

Still, at 39, MacLean wasn’t worried about her health. “I knew I should be losing some weight and exercising, but I just kept putting it off,” she says. “I had high blood pressure but I wasn’t overly concerned about it. I had never been in the hospital for anything other than having my son.”

With her busy life, MacLean was like almost half of the respondents to a 2011 Heart and Stroke survey, who said they just don’t have time to get active regularly. Another 41% said healthy meals take too long to prepare. The survey showed that most Canadians know how to protect their heart health, but too many aren’t willing to find the time.

Jennifer MacLean was one of those people – until everything changed one Friday night in August, 2010.

MacLean had gone to Charlottetown with a friend for a weekend of shopping. After a day at the mall, she went to bed at their hotel and woke up a couple of hours later with what felt like a toothache. “Then I started vomiting. Then I couldn’t catch my breath. When I couldn’t breathe, that’s what sent me to the hospital.”

After checking her for gall bladder trouble and anxiety symptoms, the ER doctor ordered an EKG (electrocardiogram) to check MacLean’s heart function. A few minutes into the test, a nurse disconnected the wires and quickly pushed her down the hall in a wheelchair to the trauma unit. (“This can’t be good,” MacLean recalls saying.) The doctor told her: “You’re having a heart attack.”

“It didn’t seem real,” MacLean says. “Next thing, they got me up on the bed and started pumping me full of drugs.” By Monday, she was on her way to Halifax by ambulance, where she was given a dye test and had a stent installed to open a constricted artery. Six days later, MacLean was home.

For the next six weeks, she had nothing but time to take care of herself. And she didn’t waste a moment.

“I started watching everything I ate and following a low-fat diet.” Reading the information she’d received in hospital and found online, she started walking five minutes a day, gradually adding more time.
When she returned to work, her boss immediately hired a full-time assistant for MacLean. “Now I work seven or eight hours a day,” she says.

And she makes physical activity a priority. “I try to get out walking minimum five to seven days, for an hour at a time. And I go to the gym three times a week. I lift weights. My trainer has me doing things I never thought I’d do like running and skipping.”

MacLean has lost weight too. She chooses not to use a scale but her clothes tell the story. “I was at one time a size 18-20. I’m now down to a 9-10.”

After a few months back at work, MacLean launched the Heart&Stroke Walkabout^TM workplace program at her company, to try to encourage her colleagues to be more active – and give her own motivation a boost. She’d read about the program on the Heart and Stroke Nova Scotia website and persuaded her employer to support it with prizes and pedometers for participating employees. Walkabout at Work supports and encourages physical activity in the workplace and offers free leader training and support for interested workplaces in Nova Scotia.

Find out more about the Heart&Stroke Walkabout^TM program:

Within days MacLean had signed up about three-quarters of A.A. Munro’s 80 or so employees in 19 offices across the province. They committed to logging their physical activity, supporting one another and competing to see who’s most active. (They can win prizes like this month’s e-reader.) MacLean keeps everyone on track with weekly emails.

Since her heart attack, MacLean knows she can’t afford to let time steal away her health again. “I don’t have a choice anymore.” She’ll always find a way to stay active, and eat well and keep her stress under control.
And for those who can’t – or won’t – find the time to take care of themselves, MacLean has a little advice: “Make it. Other things wait. The dishes will still be there later. The phone calls and messages will be there. None of it goes away.”

Are you at risk for heart disease or stroke? Take the Risk Assessment for personal insights toward a healthier you and Desjardins Financial Security will donate $1 to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

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