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We’re approaching the Pink Season. It’s that time of year when breast cancer awareness campaigns and their accompanying corporate marketing shills rev into high gear. Last year, we saw pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, pink-handled Tasers, and (yes, seriously) pink Smith & Wesson handguns, each somehow helping us to be more aware of breast cancer. What could possibly top what breast cancer survivor and author Barbara Ehrenreich calls this “cult of pink kitsch” again this year? (See also: Think Before You Pink™ for some important questions to ask about the pink ribbon).
From my perspective as a 37+ year veteran in the public relations field, I have to say that the breast cancer folks have done a fabulous job in raising awareness of their cause. So fabulous, in fact, that they have erroneously convinced women that breast cancer is our biggest health threat.
It is not, of course. This year, heart disease will kill six times more women than breast cancer will. In fact, heart disease kills more women than all forms of cancer combined. Yet heart attack survivors like me and those who care for us seem to be oddly content sitting quietly on the back burner of that massive pink stovetop.
So in the interests of offering some balance here amidst a torrent of pinkwashing, I invite you to watch this 3-minute film called “Just a Little Heart Attack”.
I love this Elizabeth Banks film so much that I have inserted it permanently into my sidebar on my Heart Sisters blog's home page.
The Emmy-nominated actress, whose own mother and sister have both been diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias, perfectly captures a typical multi-tasking woman putting her own needs well behind those of everyone else around her. She plays the harried heart attack victim here in an exquisitely hilarious yet frighteningly realistic fashion.
And her film also reminds us that young women can have heart disease, too.
Yet when researchers reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at more than 10,000 patients (48% women) who had gone to their hospital Emergency Departments with chest pain or other heart attack symptoms, they found that women under the age of 55 are SEVEN TIMES more likely to be misdiagnosed in mid-heart attack than their male counterparts are.
A commonly heard pronouncement delivered by too many Emergency physicians to too many female heart patients is:
“You’re too young to be having a heart attack.”
My sister heart attack survivors have been raving about this little film. Please do us all a favour and forward this link to the women you care about, reminding them that:
- heart disease is our #1 killer
- heart disease kills more women than men every year
- women typically wait too long before seeking help despite heart attack symptoms
- up to 80% of heart disease is preventable through lifestyle changes like regular exercise, healthy food choices, and not smoking
- women must pay attention to ALL cardiac warning signs and call 911 immediately
- YOU KNOW YOUR BODY! YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING IS JUST NOT RIGHT!
Find out more myths and facts about women’s heart disease.
See also:
- What Women With Heart Disease Can Learn From “Pinkwashing” This Month
- How Does It Really Feel to Have a Heart Attack? Women Survivors Tell Their Stories
- Am I Having a Heart Attack?
- Stupid Things That Doctors Say to Heart Patients
- ‘Time Equals Muscle’ During Women’s Heart Attack
- Women Fatally Unaware of Heart Attack Symptoms
- Is it Heartburn or Heart Attack?
- What is Causing My Chest Pain?
by Carolyn Thomas, www.myheartsisters.org
