Emmy winner Susan Lucci talks about her experience with heart disease

For more than 41 years, Emmy award-winning actress Susan Lucci played Erica Kane on television ABC daytime soap opera All my children. Kane was a fan-favorite female fictional heroine-villain character who sometimes seemed heartless on the show. But now Lucci has some heartwarming real-life warnings for all women, based on her personal experience with heart disease, which she recently discussed in a conversation with me.

The entire experience inspired Lucci to pour her heart into serving as the national ambassador for the “Go for red for women” campaign. And a big part of this ‘Red’ campaign is to help everyone read more about the number one killer of women. Yes, as the AHA emphasizesCardiovascular disease claims the lives of one in three women – more than all forms of cancer combined. Yet only 44% of women realize that this is the leading cause of premature death among them.

The symptoms of Lucci’s heart disease started with chest pressure

When Lucci – who is currently 79 years old – started telling me her first signs of heart disease, you could say she was trying to get something off her chest. “In 2018, it was October, my husband and I were led to our table at a restaurant, and I started to feel a very, very slight pressure on my chest,” Lucci recalls. “I’d never had any health problems at all, so I thought nothing of it and thought it would go away. By the time we sat down, it was gone.”

That restaurant experience may have given her some food for thought. But she didn’t actually do anything until she experienced the symptoms again. “This happened to me again, something similar at a restaurant a few weeks later,” Lucci said. “But a week later, I was in a boutique shopping for a birthday gift for a good friend, and when the woman stepped away to take it back and have it wrapped, I felt what I could no longer ignore, like an elephant pressing on my chest.”

This elephant in the room, so to speak, became a bit too much to ignore. “So I sat down on a bench to find out what was going on,” she says. “The manager came up behind me, who I had known for a long time, and asked how I was doing, and I told her I was just trying to assess this.” When Lucci told the manager about the elephant feeling, the manager said she could take Lucci to St. Francis Hospital in Long Island, New York, which was only about a mile away.

Lucci went to the hospital and had some surprising findings

“My husband had afib, so I called his doctor because I didn’t have a cardiologist and didn’t need one,” Lucci said. “I told him what was going on, and he said, ‘I want you to come to the ER because your syndrome is significant, so I’ll see you there.’ And when I met him, I thought, ‘I can’t do this today. This is my day off and I have way too much to do. I don’t want to take it away from patients who really need it.’”

Although she had some discomfort from “bothering” the doctor, her chest discomfort disappeared by the time she reached the emergency room. “But the doctor tested me, gave me a CT scan, and to everyone’s surprise, came back and told me I had a 90% blockage in my main artery and a 75% blockage in the other artery,” Lucci explained. “So the doctor said, ‘Don’t worry, I can fix it. We’ll take you to the OR.’

It was getting late at night, so Lucci wondered if she should go home and get a good night’s sleep before having the procedure. “He said, ‘No, I don’t think you understand. You could have a heart attack at any time,'” she recalled. “So he took me to the OR and had a heart surgeon ready in case they found anything more.”

The cardiologist placed two stents in Lucci’s coronary arteries

The cardiologist eventually placed two stents in the blocked coronary arteries. Coronary arteries are the blood vessels that supply blood and oxygen to many of the muscles in the heart. A coronary stent is a very small mesh-like metal tube that the doctor can insert into a coronary artery that is narrowed or completely blocked to allow blood to flow through that vessel.

With this procedure, Lucci managed to avoid what the cardiologist called the “Widowmaker.” That soap opera-esque sounding nickname is used to describe the often fatal heart attacks that result from your left anterior descending coronary artery becoming completely blocked. The LAD supplies blood to about half of your left ventricle, the largest chamber in your heart that is responsible for pumping blood to the rest of your body. Turn off your LV and your whole body is in trouble. With her coronary blood flow restored, Lucci was released from the hospital by noon the next day.

The experience motivated Lucci to raise awareness about heart disease in women

During her car ride home, Lucci said to her husband, Helmut Huber (who sadly passed away in 2022 at the age of 84), “Honey, I can’t just keep this happiness to myself.” Very specifically, very lucky, my grandfather on one shoulder as a guardian angel, my grandmother on the other, and the manager of the boutique, as it turned out, had a nursing degree. I mean, what are the chances?” Lucci felt, “I couldn’t pass on my special luck and could pass on the takeaway.”

At the same time, Lucci recalled seeing an interview in which a woman had emphasized that the symptoms of heart disease in a woman are often different from those in a man, and mentioned the kind of chest pressure Lucci experienced as a possibility. Lucci said, “Thank God the interview with this woman saved my life, and I just thought, if I tell this story now, maybe even one woman could hear what I heard. Maybe it will save her life.”

Indeed, the symptoms of coronary artery disease that women experience can be much more subtle than the classic crushing chest pain that men often describe. Symptoms can range from pain in different parts of the body, such as the jaw, neck, upper back, and shoulder, to things that don’t even look like heart disease, such as fatigue, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, or cold sweats. Lucci continued, “So I called my publicist from the car. I wasn’t even home yet because he just had to pass it on. I was on the world news tonight and good morning America and right away the American Heart Association helps me deliver the message.” The following year, she became a national ambassador for the AHA.

Lucci had no apparent risk factors for heart disease

Now Lucci didn’t quite fit what you might think is the stereotype of someone with a heart condition. It’s not like she’s been gorging on ultra-processed or fat-filled fast food all day and is couch surfing. Instead, she followed a healthy diet that included things like salmon, kale, and blueberries. She stayed physically active and did Pilates almost every day. And she would have regular check-ups with her doctor. This is a reminder that just because you don’t have the traditional risk factors for heart disease doesn’t mean you can’t get it.

But in retrospect, a deeper dive into her family history did reveal something. “We thought I had never had any health problems and that I really had all my mother’s genes,” Lucci said. “But it turned out that my blockage was due to calcium, which I inherited from my otherwise fantastic father.” This brought up another issue that Lucci wants people to be familiar with, namely their families: “I think it’s quite normal for people in general to identify their health history with that of their same-sex parent. But in my case it came from my father and I think it’s important to tell both sides of the family history.”

Lucci again went through a similar experience

So Lucci had gotten to the heart of the matter, was more aware of heart disease and was spreading that awareness to others. No chance of the same kind of thing happening again, right? Not exactly. Three years later it was déjà vu again.

“One night my husband was playing cards, and I was at home and felt similar symptoms, which I couldn’t believe,” Lucci recalls. “So of course I said the exact things I told women not to do. I started saying to myself, ‘Oh, it’ll go away.'” When her husband came home about half an hour later, Lucci didn’t even tell him and instead “he went upstairs, got ready for bed, and then I started feeling pain in my jaw and left jaw, and I had heard that was a symptom for women with heart disease as well.” At first she dismissed it as a toothache. But it was far from the tooth. When she told her husband, they finally called the doctor.

Once again, Lucci “didn’t want to bother the doctor right now. All the things I’ve told women not to do,” she said. Her husband took her to the hospital and the doctor discovered another blockage in a coronary artery, which required another stent to be placed. Lucci complained, “I felt so ashamed of my behavior because I was a spokesperson for a women’s heart health advocate and told them, ‘Don’t be afraid to call the doctor.'” But instead of shying away from shame, Lucci has since redoubled her efforts to raise awareness with the “Go Red for Women” campaign.

Speaking of “red” or perhaps “reading,” if you’ve already read Lucci’s just-published new memoir Lucci that she wrote together with Laura Morton, you will notice that she also gets to the heart of the matter. This book is a follow-up to her 2011 New York Times bestseller autobiography entitled My whole life. This new book did not raise Kane alone, as in her character Erica Cane. It included more details about her life, such as two chapters in the book about the above-mentioned heartfelt experiences.