Then she started noticing pain in her left arm. “I decided to go to the emergency room one day because the pain was pretty consistent and I was so tired,” she says. At the hospital, House’s heart rate was erratic, her blood pressure was up, and she had an abnormal electrocardiogram. Doctors told her she had congestive heart failure and needed to be admitted to the cardiac care unit. “I was totally surprised,” House says. “I had no idea that was even possible — I had just had a stress test six months earlier.” Along with heart failure, House was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, which enlarges the heart and makes it harder to pump blood throughout the body, according to the AHA. It was only the beginning of House’s heart health journey, which would lead her to where she is now: a member of a select group, AHA’s Real Women of 2020. Along with eight other women, House is sharing her story and promoting the national AHA Go Red for Women campaign, which aims to educate and spread awareness about cardiovascular disease in women. After the clinical trial ended, a year later, House had remarkable results. “I had restoration of my energy, I started a new career, I got married … everything was going really well,” she says. House, now 47, says looking back on her heart health journey, she now knows the importance of clinical trials and encourages other women to get involved in them. For decades, women — especially minority women — have been underrepresented in medical trials. A review of seven cardiovascular trials published in January 2017 in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology found that less than 5 percent of participants in these trials were black or African American, despite that population having double the rate of type 2 diabetes compared with non-Hispanic white people. “When I was in the clinical trial, I didn’t see anybody who looked like me. I didn’t see any women, I didn’t see any black women,” House says. “And this particular medication improved my health in a way that no other medication could have.” But House’s rigorous medication routine was hard to keep track of, especially with her hectic schedule and frequent business trips. She began to lose track of what meds she was taking when, and within less than a year, House says she became symptomatic again. “My heart function decreased back to between 30 and 35 percent,” she says. “Because of my weakened heart, it was definitely a challenge to find a physician who wanted to treat me as a patient.” Around this time, House says she was also thinking about having a baby. While she was able to mostly recover from not taking her medications, she never got back to the level she achieved during the clinical trial, which deemed her a high-risk patient — especially if she was trying to have a baby. Working with her cardiologist, House was able to find a perinatologist, a type of ob-gyn who specializes in high-risk pregnancies. She successfully conceived her son, Asa, at age 30, but just two years later, needed to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) placed in her chest to monitor and treat potential life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms. Despite her health challenges, House was feeling pretty good. She was eating healthy, practicing yoga, and exercising five to six times a week. But suddenly her world started to unravel. House’s mother passed away in 2013, a mere year after she lost her best friend to breast cancer. Her marriage also started to falter. “I separated from my husband and consequently had a divorce, so it was a very stressful time,” she says. “I hadn’t been maintaining a good level of self-care, and started to notice a decline in my health.” Hospital visits became more and more frequent, and she was so fatigued she could hardly change her bedsheets. House would cry at the thought of grocery shopping, and whenever she successfully completed the task, she would be too tired to unload the car. In 2016, doctors told her it was time to think about a heart transplant, which she received in 2017. Complications with the procedure kept her in the hospital for 70 days, but House recovered, and says she is stronger now than she’s ever been. She works out regularly, maintains a full-time job (something she wasn’t able to do for years, she says), and is back to a plant-based diet. And perhaps most importantly, she puts her health first. “I love my heart,” House says. “She’s my best friend, and I’m going to treat her well. Some days, I don’t feel like exercising, but I get on that treadmill for her, for my son, and for me.” To get involved or learn more about clinical trials, visit AHA’s Research Goes Red initiative. RELATED: 6 Celebrities Connected to Heart Disease Fortunately, her coworkers had undergone CPR training just a few days before, and one person started chest compressions while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Doctors were able to get her pulse back, but on the way to a larger medical facility, she went into cardiac arrest again. Again, doctors were able to bring her back, but she was bleeding internally, her kidneys were failing, and they decided to induce a coma. “They told my family to pray for a miracle because it wasn’t looking like I’d ever leave,” Lucchese says. “And they got their prayer answered, fortunately; we don’t know why, but six days later I was taken out of the coma.” At the time, Lucchese was a fit, healthy 33-year-old woman with no history of heart disease. When she awoke from the coma and was told she had gone into cardiac arrest, she says she didn’t even know what that really meant. Cardiac arrest differs from a heart attack, which is when a blockage impedes blood flow to the heart. With cardiac arrest, a malfunctioning of the heart’s electrical system causes it to stop beating — it is sudden, and can be fatal in minutes without treatment, according to the AHA. Close to 90 percent of cardiac arrests that happen outside the hospital are fatal, according to the AHA, but administering CPR right away can double or triple a person’s chance of survival. CPR saved Lucchese, but when it comes to cardiac arrest, women have a lower chance of being resuscitated by bystanders compared with men, and when they do receive CPR, are less likely to survive than men, according to a study published in December 2019 in the European Heart Journal. After her own experience and now as an AHA Real Woman ambassador, Lucchese has become an advocate for people to be CPR-trained. “Everyone I meet I ask, ‘Are you CPR-trained?’” she says. “I get a lot of funny looks, but when I tell people my story, they realize how important it is, because I’m not what people picture as someone who needs CPR.” What also saved Lucchese’s life — and helped her recover — was her active and healthy life before the cardiac arrest happened. Once she had come out of the coma and was able to leave the hospital, Lucchese says doctors recommended she go to a rehabilitation facility, but Lucchese was determined to get home, back to her husband and 2-year-old son. When she first came home from the hospital, she could hardly make it up and down stairs, and just having a shower took all her energy. But with small steps every day, Lucchese grew stronger and stronger, and now, almost three years later, Lucchese says she’s training for the Boston Marathon. Besides her personal health goals, she also found a team to run with that’s raising awareness about heart disease and stroke and supports survivors with their comeback. Lucchese says hers was a rare case that couldn’t have been predicted or prevented, which she says made it especially hard to accept and move on from. But the event gave her a new perspective on what’s important in life: not stressing about the small things, focusing on the people who mean the most, and treating your body well. “It’s so important to take care of your body,” Lucchese, now 36, says. “Being healthy saved my life. My body would have never come back the way it did if I didn’t take care of myself before.” RELATED: Hands-Only CPR Increases the Chance of Survival in Someone Having Cardiac Arrest
