Like most people, I assumed Carrie Fisher would survive a heart attack. Given that she was only 60, the constant news watch was evidence to me of a slow news day. I think the self-deprecating Carrie would have agreed. Then the next morning, she was gone. Women and heart attacks are no laughing matter and are dead serious.
Women of a certain age, post menopausal, are not only equally susceptible to heart attacks as men but are more likely than men to die from them. Why do we place this in the back of our minds instead of at the forefront, like men do? Like we all do when it comes to men and their health?
Women’s heart attack symptoms are often different from men, not always the classic left arm numbness and crushing chest pain. Women’s heart attacks are much more subdued. Their complaints are more like emotions, vague and hard to describe in physical or medical terms. A woman’s heart attack can feel like simple indigestion without a thought of anything more serious. Prior to my mother’s heart attack, she had been feeling ‘anxious’ and ‘off’ and a little ‘queasy.’ Those symptoms could be about anything, even matters of the psyche.
Carrie Fisher had a fabulous life, really living several lifetimes. Hers was marked by fame at birth, unanticipated movie mega-stardom in “Star Wars,” spiraling drug addiction mostly to pain pills and cocaine, partying with celebrities like John Belushi, rehab, and writing semi-autobiographical books—one made into a major Hollywood movie with the great Meryl Streep and legendary Shirley MacLaine acting out the presumed mother-daughter relationship of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Hollywood sweetheart Debbie Reynolds. Around this time, the real mother-daughter duo did not speak to each other for ten years. That’s got to wear on the heart, aging it prematurely. It’s hard to cling to hate and animosity toward the same person, year after year. Forgiveness and communication allow love to flow, heart to heart.
At the heart of Carrie’s chemical makeup, however, was not addiction as much as bipolar disorder. She talked candidly about possessing an over-fueled mind, one that is constantly ‘on,’ never off even when she was exhausted. Lack of rest, mental and physical, can age the heart, too.
Once mental illness was diagnosed and properly treated, including occasional shock therapy with pills instead of bolts of electricity, her mania calmed and at some point she and her mother made amends—even to the point of residing as next-door neighbors. Their story is quite poignant, demonstrated by Debbie Reynolds’ sudden death practically at the news of her daughter’s departure from the planet.
For the rest of us women of a certain age, Carrie Fisher’s sudden death is a warning to take care of our heart by exercise and diet including medical checkups and cholesterol and blood pressure meds if prescribed. In retrospect Carrie lived each day as if it were her last, leaving us one final postcard from the edge.