Episode 7 : Heart of a Woman with Wakisha Stewart

Dr. Sophia:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Sophia Podcast. I'm an obgyn practicing for over 15 years in my native New York City. And I love to help women learn about their bodies, empower them, and embrace themselves. On this podcast, we will talk openly and with heart about all things affecting women from pregnancy, menopause periods, sexual health, fertility, and so much more. Disclaimer, this is general medical information based on my professional opinion and experience. For specific medical advice, please refer to your physician. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Sophia Podcast. Considering that this month in February is American Heart Month, I'm excited to have on this episode my own cousin Wakisha Stewart, talk about her journey as she went through a near-fatal heart attack. She tells the whole story in her book, Sonata For Damaged Heart. I'm also joined by my dear friend and co-host Touseef Mirza, welcome to the show. Alright, so let's just get right into it. Keisha, so for everybody who doesn't know this is like I said, this is my cousin. I'm super excited that she is my first guest ever on the Dr. Sophia podcast, and we lovingly call her Keisha. So that's what it's gonna be for the rest of today's show. So, welcome, Keisha.

Dr. Sophia:
Thank you for having me Sophia. Ooh, she gave me my whole cultural government there. Okay, love it.

Touseef Mirza:
I have to say that I absolutely love the heart theme that is going on right now. So both of them are wearing red, Keisha, can I call you Keisha as well? Keisha also has red headphones. I'm a little bit in a maroon. They said it's okay because it's in the same hue as red, but I’m loving the energy.

Dr. Sophia:
Love the energy. All right. So, Keisha, we're gonna just jump right into it. What year was it that, all that happened to you? What year was that again?

Wakisha Stewart:
It was October of 2011.

Dr. Sophia:
So October of 2011, I was a busy resident. I was finishing up residency when I got the call that something terribly wrong was going on with you. And here I am, a woman doctor you know, and of course experiencing women who've gone through things like preeclampsia and all the other stages that can go with that, you know, cardiomyopathy. These are big terms that are just things that can affect women during pregnancy and that can affect their hearts. And then, of course, I hear this is happening to my own cousin, the possibility or the concept actually, of a heart attack. And I remember feeling very, taken aback and like, how can this happen to someone that I love? So just start and tell us your story.

Wakisha Stewart:
Of course. And we're not just, you know, distant cousins. We're first cousins.

Dr. Sophia:
We’re first cousins. My mom and her dad are brother and sister.

Wakisha Stewart:
Are brother and sister, yes. So we close.

Dr. Sophia:
Yes, we're in the cousin's group chat.

Wakisha Stewart:
So I gave birth to my second son, Michael Diego, at the end of September of 2011. Exactly two weeks later, that particular day, October 14th, 2011, I was tired, but I had a baby. I had this newborn that I was breastfeeding and supplementing formula with, and he was hungry all the time. So I didn't sleep very much. So me feeling overly fatigued wasn't really out of the realm of possibility. Friends of ours were gonna have a dinner party. It was gonna be our first opportunity to get out of the house. So I was all for it. I just wanted to go and be amongst my peers and not have to think about anything for a couple of hours. When we got to our friend's house, I was still feeling overly fatigued, and I started to feel a little disoriented, but again, just figured I just had a baby, it's fine. I began speaking to other people and as I was having conversations, I recognized that I wasn't able to see them clearly. My vision was being impaired. My stomach had a little bit of indigestion. I wasn't able to focus. I was very disoriented. At one point I was staring at my friend and she asked me, you know, can you hear me? And I said, let me just go to the bathroom, and let me splash some water on my face because at that point I started to feel like I was overheating. My palms were getting clammy.

Touseef Mirza:
You say that you, it started to blur your vision. Was it like you couldn't really, like if you're not wearing glasses and you're supposed to wear glasses, or was it a different type of blurry vision?

Wakisha Stewart:
So it was like, I could see blobs like I could see an image there, but I couldn't make out the actual, like, faces. So that was obviously, that was shocking for me. That never happened to me before. Like I said, this was my second child and I didn't experience this with my first, but I figured, okay, maybe I'm just hot. Maybe something else is happening. But I never in my wildest dreams did I think it was heart-related. So after I splashed some water on my face, I left the bathroom. I went back to sit down to resume the conversation that I was having, and suddenly I felt this sharp, the sharpest pain that I've ever felt in my whole entire life. Mind you, I've been through labor. It took my breath away and it felt at that point that my chest was just being crushed. Like it was in a vice. And I knew at that point something was wrong.

Still didn't think that it was a heart attack because I was 31. I was an athlete. I didn't really have any sort of medical history in our family as far as I knew. We didn't really have any sort of cardiac-related history. It was always diabetes that we were concerned about. So again, I didn't think that it was heart-related, but I knew that something was terribly wrong. A few seconds went by and then the pain radiated from my chest up through the back of my neck up through into my jaw. And I had that tingling and numbing sensation down my left arm. Again, I was breathless. That indigestion came back and I turned to my husband and I said, something's, something's wrong. We have to go. And, you know, he kind of jokingly said, are you sure you didn't have too much wine? And I said, no, I know I haven't drank in, you know, in nine months. But, you know, it was only, maybe I had half, if that, at that point.


Touseef Mirza:
When you talk about the pain that you felt, was it almost electric or was it more like a muscle spasm? Or was it something you had never experienced before?

Wakisha Stewart:
It was something I never experienced before. Just the sharp pain. The sharp pain in the chest. And then it was kind of like if you can imagine when you look at, like a sun or someone has a drawing of the sun and you see like the rays come shooting out of the sun. That's kind of how it felt that the pain shot out through, up into my jaw up to the back of my neck. And I would never wanna experience that type of pain, ever.

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah, we don't want you to either.

Wakisha Stewart:
Well, labor pain and that pain are different. It's just different. Not only did it take my breath away, but you could feel the energy leave you. So it was intense. It was really, really intense. And it got to the point where, you know, I told Mike, we gotta go now. I started vomiting as we were leaving the house. We got in the car, and he sped, which I don't recommend. Called 911. We were maybe seven minutes from the hospital. So he got me to the hospital. We go in, he kind of parked his car right in front of the emergency department where the ambulances park. Grabbed a wheelchair, wheeled me in, and mind you, all the symptoms that I described still experiencing wheeled me in. I'm speaking to the receptionist. She asked me, oh, what brings you in, you know, to the ER tonight? And I told her I was having chest pain, I couldn't breathe. And she asked me, which, you know, is pretty standard. Well, what were you doing prior to experiencing this? And I told her, well, I was at a dinner party. I just had a baby two weeks ago.

You know, at the time I was a nursing assistant. So I'm going through everything that I would say for my patients. Okay. We did this. I was at a party, you know, I just had a baby just in case that could be an issue. And she looked at me and she said, oh honey, you've been out for the first time. It's anxiety or panic attack. And I looked at her and I said, no, it is not, there's something seriously wrong. She told me, oh, if I just go home, I should be fine. And I said, no, I'm not leaving. I want to be checked. And she said, after she rolled her eyes, she said, okay, well you can just go wait in the waiting room. So I sat and I waited in the waiting room, probably a good 20 or 30 minutes before I got called back into triage, still experiencing shortness of breath, still experiencing chest pain, still feeling nauseated, still having the tingling and all the sharp pain, everything still present. I finally get back there.

They do the EKG, but it's inconclusive. They don’t know what's happening. A more senior nurse for whatever reason. And mind you, I mean, privacy, you're supposed to close the curtain so that you know people as they're passing by, they don't see you. But thank God they didn't that particular evening, because the nurse that passed by the bay that I was in, she looked at me for maybe two seconds and said she's having a heart attack. She needs to get to the back now.

Dr.Sophia:
Oh my God, thank God for that nurse.

Wakisha Stewart:
Right. All of a sudden everything kind of clicked. But I'm in shock. Who at 31 has a heart attack? Why? And I'm healthy. I never had an issue. Like what is happening? They rush me into the back and they start the standard protocol, you know, morphine, oxygen, they're giving me nitro.

Dr.Sophia
That's nitroglycerin.

Wakisha Stewart:
Yeah. Nitroglycerin.

Touseef Mirza:
Wakisha I Wanted to ask you like up until that point, so when you're in that hospital bed and they're doing all those tests before that nurse came, at that point, did you think you were having a heart attack? Or you still didn't know what was happening?

Wakisha Stewart:
I still didn't know what was happening. There's a part of me that thought, okay, I had a c-section. Right. So I thought, well, maybe there was a clot or something. But I didn't think it was a heart attack, heart-related. It never crossed my mind, never crossed my mind while I was being treated in the back. I can remember thinking, this is it like I've gone through. Because at this point we're talking about maybe an hour since I first experienced, you know, those initial symptoms. And I'm only now being treated. I'm not gonna make it. It's been too long. And, you know, as medical professionals, we know that time is of the essence, whether it's a heart attack or a stroke.

So at the time, the hospital that I was at did not have a cardiac intervention unit. So I had to be transported to another hospital. And I remember looking at my husband, at the time he was my boyfriend. We weren't married yet, but, I said, you know, I'm not gonna make it. I'm not gonna make it. Make sure you let Michael Diego know how much I loved him and wanted him. I had a five-year-old son at the time as well from my previous marriage. I said, make sure that they grow up knowing each other. Of course, he was just beside himself, he said, no, you're gonna be fine. Stop talking like that. But I kind of came to the realization that this might not end, you know, positively, this could be it for me. So they transported me and in the ambulance, the ambulance driver got lost to the next hospital. So many times that night, looking back, I thought, I shouldn't be here. Like, why am I here? The ambulance driver got lost. You know, they didn't wanna look at me, you know, so many things happened.

But finally, we did make it to the hospital. Mike had gotten there before I did. It's like he thought something horrible happened. They wheeled me in, they rushed me into surgery. The cardiologist, thank goodness that the cardiologist who was on call had seen a case like mine the year prior. And he has been a cardiologist for 30-plus years at this point. He explained to me once he did my angioplasty, he placed a stent in my heart. And he said, what you had is what we call a scad, which is a spontaneous coronary artery dissection. So basically the inner lining of my artery, and it happens in my LAD, which is your left anterior descending. It's one of the most major arteries. One of the most major arteries. That's it. No, that's all good. And unfortunately, whatever the case was, because at that time, I mean, they're still doing research even now today, but he said what probably happened was hormones could have weakened the lining. And that's what caused this tear. And because the tear completely occluded my artery, that's what caused my quote-unquote widow-maker heart attack. The widow maker, only one in four survive. So I had, you know, only a 25% chance of survival that night.

So of course, I'm just still in shock, still wondering why did this happen? How still, what is scad a thing? Why didn't I know that women could have heart attacks after? Why is this something that I wasn't aware that I should look out for? But at that point, you know, I was just focusing on surviving the night after they placed the stents. I was in the cardiac intensive care unit. The nurses were great, but they weren't used to having a young patient like me. You know, they're used to having, you know, Grandpa Joe or Grandma Ruth, and having to take care of people who didn't just have a baby. And I remember at one point I just said, I just wanna go to sleep. Like, I don't know if I'm gonna wake up, but I just wanna go to sleep. All of this is just too much. It's too much to handle.

Touseef Mirza:
So just a question, what the stent actually did was to stop the bleeding?

Dr. Sophia:
The stent actually was to then keep the artery open. So what happened to her, basically, is that because of that tear, imagine that the tear then causes almost like a flap that closes the artery. Okay. And then stops-

Wakisha Stewart:
So imagine like a hose.


Dr. Sophia:
So like a hose that you kind of like cut off. So now if the hose is cut off, you're no longer getting flow to the heart. And so what the stent does is keep the hose open. And that's what she had.

Touseef Mirza:
Okay. So the blood wasn't flowing well. And when you have scad, your blood flow isn't going well.

Dr. Sophia:
To the heart and then if it's not going to the heart, it's not going to any other part of the body.

Wakisha Stewart:
And for scad, there's different, which I didn't know at the time, which I discovered, you know, through my own research. And years later, there are different levels of scad and different degrees of severity. There's some women who have scad and it doesn't completely occlude their arteries. You know, sometimes they can just have it healed by medication and rest, whereas, you know, more extreme could be completely a hundred percent occluded, have a heart attack, go into cardiac arrest. So there's, there's a wide range of things that can happen.

But yeah, it was something that was rare and I had to learn everything that I could about it because it happened to me. And I wanted to know why, why did it happen to me? How could this happen? It was a very trying time. I went into depression because once I was released a few days later, I couldn't lift anything more than 10 pounds, which meant I couldn't lift my baby. I couldn't lift my newborn son when he was born, he was eight pounds, 13 ounces. So two weeks went by, and he was already at 11, 12 pounds. I mean, he was an eater, like I said. So I couldn't lift him up by myself. I always had to have someone with me just in case. And for someone who was independent the majority of my life, as Sophia knows, I mean, yes, we were all kind of raised the same, to be independent women. Yes. You know, we handle ourselves.

Dr. Sophia:
Very much so.

Wakisha Stewart:
It was very hard for me to release and have to become dependent upon other people. And that for me was the biggest hurdle in the beginning. It was allowing myself to be okay with being dependent. And I struggled. I really struggled with that.

Touseef Mirza:
So, let me ask you, I mean, I think what's amazing about your story, and thank you for sharing all of that, is the fact that you said that you were an athlete, and you were a nurse and you were young. And so when you put all of those things together and you still had it, it's kind of mind-boggling to number one, realize that it can happen to somebody like that, number one. And number two, once you realize what happened, did you start to think, oh, I should have known this? Or, are there certain things that you go back and like to double-check with you? And I don't think you need to do that. I'm just wondering what you went through, in terms of post thinking about this.

Wakisha Stewart:
Once you survive something like that, you start to think, well, A, why did it happen? And B, why did I not know that it could happen? And I just think that unfortunately the majority of doctors, cardiologists, obgyns, a lot of them don't know what a scad is.

Dr. Sophia:
You’re 100 percent correct.

Wakisha Stewart:
I had to teach. So the cardiologist, like I said, who placed the stent, had only seen one case, and that was the year prior. And she was a marathon runner. With scads, frequently it affects women that are healthy. It sometimes happens, or a majority of the time it happens to women who are postpartum or going through perimenopause or menopause. It's one of those hormone things. And it also happens sometimes to people who are working out hard. You know, someone could just run a marathon, and that increased demand on the heart could cause the scad. So there are all sorts of different reasons, but the two main ones they believe it's hormone related or stress-induced. You don't know if you're gonna be the one. And that's what upset me the most because you don't know if you're going to be the one. Actually, I was grateful because the doctor that I had, he told me probably one of the reasons why I survived was because I was an athlete. I had-

Dr. Sophia:
A very strong heart. You had collateral. You had-

Wakisha Stewart:
Collaterals. Exactly.


Dr. Sophia:
Yeah. Your heart is already working like a champ. So even though your LAD, what we call the widow maker is down the rest of your heart was like, okay, we gotta fight. You know?

Wakisha Stewart:
Right. Exactly. And that could be what saved me. And I also think back to how we grew up. We didn't have junk food in the house. The way that we grew up. We had, you know, my parents would cook. We didn't get McDonalds. We always ate at home. We didn't know we always ate at home. You know, we ate fruits and vegetables.

Dr. Sophia:
We actually ate, rather, despite being from our very Haitian background, but, so it's not just fried foods. You know, we actually had a lot of vegetables growing up, you know. I think we were very fortunate that we also had parents who believed in working out. You know, my mother always worked out. Her dad and her mom always worked out. It was very important that we always had a very active lifestyle. So yeah, Keisha, you're right. We're very fortunate that we had.

Wakisha Stewart:
We were given a foundation.

Dr. Sophia:
Foundation.

Wakisha Stewart:
We were given a great foundation. I think that also contributed to the fact of why I survived. You know, our parents set us up for success in that way. So if something were to happen without even realizing or recognizing it, if something were to happen, our bodies would fight and be able to fight and be able to heal.


Dr. Sophia:
Wow. You know, first Kish, you know, this is our first time actually talking about this like this.

Wakisha Stewart:
Yeah, yeah. I don’t think I've ever really talked to my family in depth about it.

Dr. Sophia:
I think, you know, as I'm listening to you, my eyes were welling up and I'm like, oh my God, I can't, you know, and I think about the fact that you're right. As a doctor, I've had one instance of scad, and guess what it was this year? It was this year that I encountered a patient who had basically what you had. And she was eight months postpartum. Like I said, I've heard of women who've had other heart conditions related to pregnancy, but certainly, I did not know about scad.

Wakisha Stewart:
Unfortunately, it's becoming more frequent. It's something that I believe with the American Heart Association, they said that almost 35% of heart attacks that happen to women between the ages of 20 to 50 are SCAD-related.

Dr. Sophia:
Wow. I mean that's high. That's one in three.

Wakisha Stewart:
That's crazy. It's a phenomenon that's really not discussed. It's a phenomenon. Like you said, physicians just don't know. They don't realize.

Touseef Mirza:
And because it's hormonally based, it only happens to women? Or do men also get scad?

Wakisha Stewart:
Men also get scared. So 90% of the cases are female, whereas 10% are male.

Dr. Sophia:
You know, it's funny because our hormones are actually supposed to be very protective. And they are. But I think it's probably since it's happening after deliveries and it's happening in menopause, it's actually the change that happens in the hormones. That's probably the real cause of what, you know, as part of it, at least. It's the actual change. And then for postpartum, it's a very dramatic change. It happens very quickly. The up and the down that happens with your hormones. So I wouldn't be surprised at how that plays the role.

Wakisha Stewart:
Yeah.

Dr. Sophia:
So if you don't mind talking to us a little bit more about the disparities or some of the racial, like how you felt as a black woman and what you experienced being a black woman who was having that heart attack at the time.

Wakisha Stewart:
So, at the time, I didn't think of it being a racial thing. You know, as you're going through it, you're just thinking it's fight or flight. Right? So I was fighting, I was fighting to survive looking back after the fact. I just kept thinking, well, why was she so dismissive? Why was she so quick to dismiss me? And unfortunately, there are these stereotypes. There's this notion that women are dramatic. That women are just, you know, there to get attention. There's a stereotype that black women especially are loud and angry, meanwhile, I'm not allowed and angry, I can get loud and angry if you're not going to take me seriously. But, you know-

Dr. Sophia:
You're so far from-

Wakisha Stewart:
Right. Exactly. I'm very, very docile. Mild.

Dr. Sophia:
Yeah. Mild-mannered

Wakisha Stewart:
I think a lot of times there are these cultural biases that we all have, right? In the medical field, I remember being in nursing school and having a chapter about medical bias. And, you know, they had the example, oh, asian women tend to be a little more timid and quiet. You know, black women are seen to be strong, so they don't need as much pain medication. And I remember my professor saying, throw all of this out the window because each individual needs to be seen as just that, an individual. But unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. We're human and we like to grasp or hold onto all these different ideas to make life a little bit easier. Right? And that's just not fair.

And at the time when I looked back, I was so angry. I was angry, of course, because I kept thinking, I said I had chest pain. Right?I start questioning myself. And, I just kept thinking, well, why would she, a woman, kind of minimize what I'm going through? And that made me want change. It took a while for me to be able to share my story. I went back to nursing school because of that nurse that saved my life. Because I saw that there was such a great need for patients who might not be able to speak up for themselves. To have an advocate say, no, you're going to listen to the patient. My patient needs abcd…. I think women don't-

Dr. Sophia:
Can I just say sorry, I'm like really tearing up right now.

Touseef Mirza:
No wonder you two are blood-related, because what you just said is pretty much the same story that Sophia tells me all the time about why she became an obgyn.

Dr. Sophia:
Yeah. I needed to stand up for women. I needed to be there for women. And it's the whole sole reason why I went to medical school is to take care of women.

Wakisha Stewart:
I think for us, because of how we were raised, how we were brought up, we are strong in that respect. Like, we know that we, as women, need voices to be heard.

Dr. Sophia:
Definitely.

Wakisha Stewart:
And again, the way that we were raised is really probably what got you to go, got me to go, you know, and I am not the type of person who likes attention at all. But it's because I have this passion, this fire in me to not let another woman go through what I went through. And since 2011, there have been so many instances in which they have, and I knew that if I survived, I survived for a reason. And the reason was to do what I am doing now, to educate. So that way I could advocate or have other people advocate for themselves.

Touseef Mirza:
Can I ask you a question? So now that you know all of this information and have lived through scad yourself if you were to go back on that October day in 2011, and you would start to have these populations or feeling a little bit tired, do you feel that you would've been able to maybe catch it or recognize it a little bit quicker?

Wakisha Stewart:
Knowing what I know now, if I knew all of that back then, yes. I would say, because now I speak about listening to your body. I listened to my body. It took a little bit longer for me to listen to my body, but I listened. I did listen. I should have listened sooner, but maybe I needed to go through the dramatics, go through everything that I went through in order for me to relay this message that women have heart attacks too. And they're not the same as men.

Dr. Sophia:
It's so funny because I want us to all really ring home that message because you said, I was just feeling, you know, tired and nauseous, you know like you felt nauseated. And, that's very often how women present when they are having a heart attack. They very often present completely atypical. It's not this elephant sitting on their chest. That's a very late sign. Yes. You know, it's not the first thing that's happening when a woman starts having a heart attack.

Wakisha Stewart:
Sometimes they don't, they don't even have chest pain.

Dr. Sophia:
Exactly.

Wakisha Stewart:
Sometimes they don't. But they have all these other symptoms and I often say, you know, your body is a beautiful machine. It will give you signs. But you have to know your body, know your baseline, and know yourself well enough to know what is wrong, what's right, and what's wrong. And thankfully that night I knew myself well enough to say, no, something is wrong and I am going to be seen. Women have this tendency to have this superwoman syndrome where we think we can handle everything. And, you know, if we start feeling sick, we kind of push past it because there's so much we have to do. Now having gone through what I went through, I mean, trust me in the last decade, I've had a lot of ups and downs. And I've had to, I've had my body remind me, you know, that I have to take my time, go slow. I have to make time for me. But, we all need to recognize that self-care is not selfish. It's selfless.

The more that we can take care of ourselves, we're able to be there for the family and the friends that we, you know, feel that we have to take care of. So take care of you, make sure you're doing what you need to do. And as far as my status is concerned, there is nothing I could have done to avoid it. It wasn't because I didn't eat correctly. It wasn't because I wasn't exercising or anything like that. So, like I said earlier, it's, you have a good foundation. Give your children that foundation, make sure that they're eating right and being active. Set yourself up for success so that if something does happen, you have a better chance of survival.

Dr. Sophia:
That's amazing. That's great advice, Keisha. That's like, it really is. I wanna ask you a question about how you feel now about just heart disease in general. Or what do you think about it in terms of what else women should know?

Wakisha Stewart:
I get angry sometimes. I get angry that it's still, you know, a woman dies every 80 seconds due to heart disease. One in three women. So the three of us are speaking right now. One of us is gone, right?

Dr. Sophia:
Yes. That's correct.

Wakisha Stewart:
So I get really, really angry that the numbers have not changed. And every single time someone comes across my profile or something that I've done with the American Heart Association and they say, oh, I didn't know. That angers me. It's like, why? Why is this still something that people don't know? And I wanna scream from the rooftops, you know, listen, what more attention do I need to bring? What else can I do to bring attention to the cause? Heart disease is affecting women younger and younger, and unfortunately, it's affecting minority communities disproportionately. I don't know what it is. You know, they say that, oh, family history the way you, or where you might have grown up, there's these, you know, areas where fresh fruit and vegetables aren't something that is commonplace.

Dr. Sophia:
Yeah. It's not readily available. It's just always fast food and things like that.

Wakisha Stewart:
Yeah. It's just at what point do we stop penalizing certain communities because of what they look like? At what point do we stop signing these death sentences just because of where you're born?

Dr. Sophia:
Right.

Wakisha Stewart:
And it angers me that it's those communities that don't have the knowledge and education about what heart disease is. You know, in the past, I've raised money and I've said, you know, raising money is a way to help facilitate, bring programs into these underprivileged areas that need it, that need different types of programs in order to let people know what they should and shouldn't be doing. You know, these smoking cessation programs, the fresh food programs, even within schools themselves. Yeah. It just, it really does anger me

Touseef Mirza:
In terms of making this more mainstream or so that people know about heart disease and scad and other heart diseases like that. What do we think is a good place to amplify? Does it need to come from the medical doctors? Does it need to come from the medical schools to teach the doctors? Does it come from public health announcements?

Wakisha Stewart:
All of it. I think all of it.

Dr. Sophia:
We're doing it right now.

Wakisha Stewart:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Sophia:
We're doing it right now. It's of those things.

Wakisha Stewart:
I think more people who have survived need to speak up, share their truths, and share what they went through. I've been fortunate enough to kind of be someone who was vulnerable enough to put herself out there and say, this is the new face of cardiovascular disease. You can't categorize me as that typical heart disease patient because of what I went through. But I have a form of it. I do. And more and more women are being affected. We have to stand up and we have to say, okay, enough is enough. Educate us. Educate us from the beginning. Educate us in school when we're growing up about heart disease. You know, school lunch programs and breakfast programs. Educate us around that. So that way it becomes habitual. It ends up being something that we have been brought up with.

And we know, and we've heard so that by the time we reach our twenties, we understand and we know diet is important. Treating your body right is important. I think the medical community in general, they need maybe an overhaul of just women's health. I mean, what has gone on in regards to women's health is beyond me. That's a whole other, that could be a whole other show.

Dr. Sophia:
We can do a whole other podcast on that one.

Wakisha Stewart:
Because that all in of itself is something that I get worked up about, especially since I have a daughter. But yeah, I think the medical community, we have to start, especially males within the medical community, they have to stop with this whole notion that women are dramatic. Stop assuming that because we wait 30% longer to go to the hospital when we are having some sort of heart-related issue than men do – we wait.

Dr. Sophia:
Right, we think we're gonna get over it. We are gonna push through it. We're gonna, you know, what we do in our everyday lives in the first place, we take care of everybody else before we take care of ourselves. Right.

Wakisha Stewart:
Men are the ones that are more dramatic.

Dr. Sophia:
Oh yeah. Having had a husband and having two sons. I'm clear. And it's funny, I wanna make mention of a couple of things in terms of when we think about heart disease, of course, Keisha, you had a heart attack. But I wanna remind women, heart disease encompasses high blood pressure, heart disease encompasses what we call angina or just, like, pain, like with exertion or chest pain that happens when you're, you know, just trying to exercise. Or you may not be having a heart attack, but you do get some discomfort. It can incorporate, like shortness of breath when you are trying to do anything workout or just your normal daily activities. But one of the bigger ones is really, the heart disease of hypertension. And we don't always think of it as heart disease. Yeah. But high blood pressure is a major risk factor for women to then be at increased risk for a heart attack, for heart attack, for strokes, you know, for so many things. And it is, that's why it's considered the silent killer.

Wakisha Stewart:
Right. Exactly.

Dr. Sophia:
You know, I wanna make sure that we are not separating, you know, coronary artery disease and the like from things like hypertension, because it affects so many people and so many women. I mean, and, and all the other things that happened to us, you know, a little bit about my own story, having had preeclampsia when I had Tyler, my first son.

Touseef Mirza:
Can you explain what preeclampsia is?

Dr. Sophia:
Sure. Preeclampsia, again, is a high blood pressure problem that happens in pregnancy, that puts you at risk for developing seizures, stroke and cardiomyopathy. These are all things that can happen due to preeclampsia. And I also developed high blood pressure at the age of 30. And we all know I'm gonna be in my mid-forties now, boy. But it's so funny because people look at me and they're like, what? You have high blood pressure? And I'm like, yeah. And this is also the heaviest I've ever been in my entire life. I am bigger now than I was eight months pregnant. And so we always think that hypertension or high blood pressure only happens to women who are very obese or overweight or sedentary. And like Keisha said, we're a family that moves and we're a family that eats well. And so it's not because I'm not eating the right foods, and it's not because I'm not exercising or moving and having an active lifestyle that I have high blood pressure. It's just what it is. It's part of our family history.

Again, the concept of knowing our family history. And, for us, you know, we had our grandmother passed away from diabetes, but it was never really explained to us that our family also suffers from high blood pressure. You know? And so, you know, my mom had high blood pressure also in her thirties. And so this is just what it is, you know? And it's a fight. It's a fight to make sure that my pressure is always normal and whether that means medication. And, you know, like we've, we've been talking about the concept of self-care. I'm not exactly great at that. I'm doing my best in terms of the relaxation part of it. You know, Keisha, I can't, you know, stop how I feel knowing that we're having this conversation, knowing what we're bringing to, the masses, what we're introducing to women all over. This is where it starts. It starts with the conversation. I'm gonna move on and just ask you a question. So you have a book?

Wakisha Stewart:
Yes.

Dr. Sophia:
So I'd like to know a little bit more what's the, what's the mission, from your book, or, or what do you hope is gonna happen from your book moving forward.

Wakisha Stewart:
Hopefully, everyone buys it.


Touseef Mirza:
We'll put a link to it in our bio.

Wakisha Stewart:
Thank you. But in all seriousness, when my heart attack happened, I cannot express how alone and alienated I felt. And at the time when I was doing my own research, because I have this compulsion to need to learn everything, I couldn't find a lot of information and I couldn't find people like me who went through it, who had the same experience. So one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because once I did start sharing my story, I had women reach out and say, oh my gosh, I didn't know, I went through this. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for being so encouraging. And I thought, yeah, I have, I need to write everything down, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because it needs to be known. and how do you navigate all of that? Like, I had another baby after a heart attack, which was a big No-No. It was a surprise. I discuss, you know, it's a very controversial issue, but I discuss what I went through trying to decide if I was going to follow through with the pregnancy and risk everything or not. Obviously, I followed through 'cause she's here. But it was a very difficult decision.

And I think people don't recognize when it comes to reproductive rights that it's not just about wanting to be free or, you know, you just don't wanna be tied down, you know, just gonna have an abortion just because. No, there's a lot of thought that goes through it. There's a lot of emotion involved in it. So, you know, that's one of the things that I talk about. I talk very openly about what I had to go through, and even with Mike, our relationship, how it was affected by my heart attack, because I turned within. I talk about mental health struggles, you know, all of that is important for people to know and understand. So if you have had a heart attack and you're struggling, you could read my book and maybe get some inspiration. If you're in the medical field, you could read my book and get inspiration on how you need to look at your patients differently.

Dr. Sophia:
Or the same but more with more intention. With more, with more feeling and intuitiveness and listening and making sure that you are hearing the patients when they actually speak to you.

Wakisha Stewart:
Right. And I discussed that I went from one cardiologist to another because he and I were not on the same wavelength and it wasn't working for me. I talk about how you can fire your doctor, you can get a second opinion. It's a service. Keep yourself abreast to new things.

Dr. Sophia:
I advocate for my patients, even my own patients, to go and get a second opinion because I want them to, you know, really feel comfortable and have a lot of trust.


Wakisha Stewart:
That's what makes you a great physician, because you understand that, and you don't have ego or anything like that. You truly want what's best for your patients. That's the cardiologist I want.


Dr. Sophia:
I want what's best for you. I want what's best for you, my cousin. I want what's best for my sister, my mother.


Wakisha Stewart:
I was fortunate to find a cardiologist who said, tell me more. Tell me more. Right. You know, and he ran the cardiac rehab. He had written a bunch of different articles that were in, you know, the American Cardiologists Journal or whatever it's called. But he said we are a team. We are a team. We're going to figure this out. If this medicine isn't gonna work, we'll try something else. And because of him, I wasn't in heart failure anymore. And if not for him, if not for me, knowing that I needed better, who knows where I would be? And there was a point in time in which I was having chest pain again years later. And he said, or I asked him, do you think if I went to the Mayo Clinic just to figure some things out? And he encouraged it. He said, yes, go to the Mayo Clinic. They have state-of-the-art equipment there. They might tell you something that I just don't know, that I just couldn't find with what I have. So I encourage people to find a doctor that is on your team and wants to be on your team and listens.

Touseef Mirza :
So, I wanted to ask you, the name of your book is Sonata for a Damaged Heart. Why sonata?

Wakisha Stewart:
So it's kind of a play on a couple of things. So a sonata has four parts. Your heart has four parts. Sonata is, you know, music-based. For me, music was always something that I felt resonated with me. I was able to truly get into music and movement and dance. You know, I danced for about 17 years and it was something that was very freeing for me when I became a national spokesperson for the Go Red for Women Movement in 2022. The campaign was called Reclaim Your Rhythm. And I just thought, rhythm dance, you know, sonata, a lot of times ballets are based upon these sonatas that are done. This book is my own version of a musical for, you know, talking about a damaged heart, you know, so.

Dr. Sophia:
And one that I feel has healed in an incredible way with bringing us this book and all of the advocacy and the things that you do. So I'm just super proud of you. I wanna say that super publicly that for everyone to know that what you've been through is incredible. And, the fact that you share your story with all of us, that it's gonna change people's lives.

Wakisha Stewart:
Thank you for having me on. I'm truly grateful for women like you, for a cousin like you, for physicians like you who truly, truly understand and want what's best for everyone, for everyone, for humanity. So, thank you.

Dr. Sophia:
Absolutely. So, in closing, I want you to just share with us, please, an excerpt from your book.

Wakisha Stewart:
Okay. Let's see. Cool. Liquid snakes up my arm, the room blurs and spins, and I'm floating as if I'm inside and outside my body at the same time. Someone brings Mike into the room. I watch him sit down next to me, watch myself, tell him I'm having a heart attack, watch myself cry, make sure the boys grow up as brothers together I hear myself say. Look in my eyes, promise me. And that part of me watching and hearing everything, the machines, my body abandoning me, me saying goodbye begins to feel hyper-aware and strangely calm. Everything becomes bright and clear and then goes quiet. I must be dying. I am being taken from this world, but I will go out with dignity. I don't want to die, but I accept it.

Dr. Sophia:
And with that, oh I’m sorry.

Wakisha Stewart:
I didn't die.

Dr.Sophia:
I know, I know you're here, you're here with me. I'm here. Sorry. I have-

Wakisha Stewart:
I have to just, you know, break it up somehow.

Dr. Sophia:
I, I just, wow. This is exactly why we are here, so that we can share your story and hopefully save another life. So yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, American Heart Association for having you as one of their advocates and I'm just so happy you're my cousin.

Wakisha Stewart:
I mean, you really don't know how much this means to me to be able to sit here with you and be able to discuss things like this, because it really does matter so much. It just matters so much. And all I wanna do is save lives and prevent women from going through what I went through.

Dr. Sophia:
Amen to that.

Wakisha Stewart:
Thank you so much.

Dr. Sophia:
Thank you so much, Keisha, for being with us. Thank you. Thank you everyone for listening to the Dr. Sophia podcast. Until next time, bye.