Yahoo Lifestyle Susan Lucci Opens Up About Her Life-Threatening Experience
Susan Lucci is urging women to put themselves on their to-do list. Take it from the actress and heart disease survivor: Listening to your body could save your life.
The 78-year-old is best known for portraying Erica Kane on the ABC soap opera All My Children from 1970 until the show's finale in 2011. And while we don't suggest going full Pine Valley villain, most of us could take a note from Erica on prioritizing ourselves.
Good Housekeeping spoke with Susan ahead of The American Heart Association's 2025 Red Dress Collection Concert, and she opened up about the life-threatening experience that led her to become an advocate for women's heart health.
"I felt so lucky to survive," Susan said of why she continues bringing attention to the cause. "If it would help save even one woman's life, I wanted to do it. I had to do it."
Five years ago, in October of 2018, Susan felt "a very mild pressure" on her chest. She was at a restaurant with her husband waiting to be seated, and by the time they sat down, the pressure was gone. "I didn't think too much of it," she said. When she experienced a similar feeling a couple of weeks later, she also brushed it off.
"As women we think, 'Oh, it's nothing, it'll go away.' Quite candidly, I thought, maybe I have a new bra on and it's too tight. I knew I didn't. But that's also typical of what we as women do. We talk ourselves out of it," she continued. "The second time that pressure was very mild, but it was radiating around my rib cage to my back, and that was unusual."
A week later, Susan was waiting for a gift to be wrapped at a boutique. That was when "I felt something I could no longer ignore," she recalled. "I felt like there was an elephant pressing on my chest. I sat down on a bench and the manager came up and asked if I was OK. I had known her for many years, and I said that I was just trying to sit there for a minute to assess what was going on. She asked what it was, and I told her about the elephant pressing on my chest."
"Very calmly, she said, 'Susan, my car is right outside. Why don't you let me take you to St. Francis Hospital? I can get you there faster than an ambulance can get here.' I agreed, and I called my husband's cardiologist from the car. I had no cardiologist, I had no reason to. He asked what my symptoms were, and I told him, and he said, 'Meet me at the E.R. Your symptoms are substantial.'"
"On the way to the hospital, even with all of that, I was thinking, this is my day off. This will go away. I have no time for this. You know what it's like when you have a day off from working. You suddenly need to accomplish everything."
As Susan told it, "it wasn't just a miracle that one of the best heart hospitals in the country was down the road or that one of the leading cardiologists in the world is the head of that department. But that the manager of this boutique also had a degree in nursing."
Susan was given a cardiac CT scan, and much to her surprise, she had a 90% blockage in her main artery and a 75% blockage in an adjacent artery. She was told they needed to take her to the O.R. and put a stent in both arteries.
"I said, well, shouldn't I go home and have a good night's sleep in my own bed and come back first thing in the morning?" Susan recounted. "He said, I don't think you quite understand. You could have a heart attack at any minute. I didn't understand. I didn't get it."
Susan had surgery and was discharged before noon the next day. On the way home from the hospital, she said, "I felt compelled to pass this good luck forward. I called my publicist and asked if she could help me get the message out. If I could get my story out, [share] what happened to me, maybe it could help save just one woman's life."
Susan shared her story widely in 2018, and doubled down on her messaging in 2022 after a second cardiovascular episode. This time, she needed another "stent implanted in a coronary artery that was 80% blocked, potentially avoiding a serious heart attack," according to a story published by The American Heart Association.
February is American Heart Health Month, and Susan shared the most important heart health advice she took away from her own journey:
Put yourself on your to-do list.
"I almost didn't go to the ER, because I thought I had too much to do that day. As women, we think everything's going to go away because we're so busy taking care of our children, our spouses, our homes, our careers — and we simply don't ever put ourselves on our to-do list. And if we do, it's way at the bottom. It's only if you have extra time."
Listen to your body.
"If it's not behaving in the way that's normal for you, take action, call your doctor. I was told by the nurses as I was being checked out, 'It's a really good thing that you acted on this and you called.' If I would've been home, I would have thought, I just need to drink some water and lay down for a little while. And they said, 'You probably would not have woken up. You just narrowly avoided the widow-maker.'"
This is an often-used term for a severe heart attack that occurs when the LAD artery becomes 100% blocked. It's also important to note that despite the name, a widow-maker heart attack can affect both men and women. As Judith Lichtman, Ph.D., MPH previously told Good Housekeeping, heart attack symptoms in women can vary widely. It's important to note that the chest pain may be mild.
Women don't always experience the "dramatic, elephant-on-my-chest heart attack pain," Dr. Lichtman explained. Which is why Susan's final takeaway is key.
Don't be afraid to call the doctor.
"I was afraid to take this busy, wonderful doctor's time away from patients who I felt really needed him. I didn't count myself as someone who really needed him. And I just wanted to say to women, don't be afraid that you are taking the doctor's time away from other patients. You are a potential patient. Your life is worth saving. If you don't save your life, you can't be there for your children, your spouse, your career, your home."
As Susan explained, she always thought she had her mother's genes. Her mom was 100 at the time, and neither of them had ever experienced symptoms of heart disease. Susan also pointed out that she maintained a healthy diet, worked out almost every day, didn't smoke and rarely drank. Susan concludes: "If it could happen to someone like me, it could happen to anyone."
National Wear Red Day is Friday, February 7, 2025. The AHA encourages wearing red to help raise awareness of cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of women.
Get the facts on heart attack symptoms in women from The American Heart Association.
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