Susan Lucci is opening up about her heart disease battle as she urges women to listen to their bodies. The All My Children actress, 75, opened up on Good Morning America Monday about her recent emergency heart procedure, which was the second of its type she’s had to undergo. Lucci explained to Amy Robach that she first started experiencing “shortness of breath,” which was then joined by discomfort around her ribcage and back.
These symptoms were similar to those Lucci had three years prior with her first heart episode, which immediately alerted her that something was wrong. “I thought, ‘This is crazy. These are the same kind of symptoms that I had three years ago but it can’t be,’” she said. “But when I lay down, I started to feel a sharp coming-and-going pain in my jaw.” When she called her doctor, he advised her to rush to the emergency room.
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Undergoing a panel of tests, Lucci’s doctor soon told her she had an 80% blockage in one of her arteries due to plaque buildup, and the star was rushed to a cardiac catheterization lab, where she had another stent implanted to open up the artery and allow the blockage to dissipate. “She wasn’t having a heart attack this time and she wasn’t unstable,” Lucci’s doctor, Dr. Richard Shlofmitz, chairman of cardiology at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York, explained on Good Morning America. “But she had symptoms that were certainly concerning to me that something might be wrong.”
Shlofmitz warned that if Lucci hadn’t had her symptoms checked out immediately, it could have had the possibility to be a major issue. Lucci, who has long been a part of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, then urged women to listen to their bodies and educate themselves on the signs of a possible heart episode. “Listen to your heart and act on [the symptoms],” she said. “Give yourself permission to take good care of yourself. Be your own best friend. Be your own advocate. You’ll save your life.”
