Girl, 14, who felt ‘butterflies’ after dancing with a boy was shocked to find out she’d suffered a heart attack
A TEENAGER who experienced butterflies while at a school dance was shocked when medics discovered she had actually suffered a heart attack.
Ceirra Zeager was just 14-years-old when she passed out on the floor of her family home after returning from the event.
At first, the teen didn't know how to interpret the butterfly-like feeling in her chest, which started while dancing with a boy for the very first time.
"Is this how it is to have feelings?" Ceirra, now 23 asked herself.
After being rushed to hospital, Ceirra from Pennsylvania, US, said the "butterflies" had morphed into a deep fatigue and "intense burning pain" in her upper arm.
Recalling her ordeal, she said she now knows arm pain is often a sign of heart attacks in women.
Read more on heart attacks
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for women in the UK - killing 77 each day and in the US every 40 seconds someone dies from a heart attack, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) states.
And women are when it comes to coronary problems than men, according to the .
Many women have their heart attacks dismissed as other conditions, such as anxiety, heartburn or ‘a funny turn’.
At the time, doctors fobbed off Ceirra's pain as "teenage anxiety" and didn't give her any pain medicine, she told .
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"It really broke me to hear that because I felt embarrassed that my whole family was there, and I was ruining my brother's birthday get-together," Ceirra said.
Still, the doctor recommended Ceirra visit a children's hospital just to be safe.
After waiting for hours, Ceirra was told she would need emergency surgery.
And it wasn't until after the operation the teenager was told she’d suffered a heart attack, as a result of a blood clot that had travelled through a hole in her heart and into a coronary artery.
Later, tests revealed the teen had elevated lipoprotein A - which means her red blood cells were "extra sticky" - leading to a blood clot.
She was also born with a hole in her heart, called patent foramen ovale (PFO), which allowed the clot to get lodged in her coronary artery, causing the heart attack.
What are symptoms of a heart attack?
A heart attack is also known as a myocardial infarction and symptoms can be difficult to spot for sure, because they can vary from person to person.
The most common signs include:
- chest pain, tightness, heaviness, pain or a burning feeling in your chest
- pain in the arms, neck, jaw, back or stomach
- for some people the pain and tightness will be severe, while for others it will just feel uncomfortable
- sweating
- feeling light-headed
- becoming short of breath
- feeling nauseous or vomiting
According to the , PFO rarely leads to complications. But in Ceirra's case, the high lipoprotein A levels made a heart incident more likely.
Following the successful surgery, the teen was sent home with blood thinners.
However, she said the heart attack changed her life forever, as it left her heart “permanently damaged”.
According to Ceirra, who shared her story with the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women “Real Women” , she could only attend school for half a day and, to take pressure off her heart, she used a backpack on wheels.
“I felt like everyone was looking at me like I was a porcelain doll,” she said.
However, it wasn't until 2021 that Ceirra began to experience new symptoms, including extreme fatigue and shortness of breath.
Scans revealed that one of her heart valves was “leaky” after it had been damaged by her heart attack nearly a decade earlier.
In February 2021, shortly after her wedding, Ceirra had to undergo open-heart surgery to repair the valve.
The slow-recovery proved difficult for the 23-year-old, who found the mental toil hard to move past.
“You’re swollen, you’re bruised, you don’t feel like yourself, you’re on all sorts of painkillers, and you’re just barely making it through each day,” she told Insider.
“In that moment, I was not positive. I was not happy," she added.
Now, Ceirra keeps her heart healthy through regular exercise and a low-sodium diet.
She also wants to share her story with others in the hopes that she can spread awareness about heart disease.
How can you prevent a heart attack?
The most important thing a person can do to ward off a heart attack is to live a healthy lifestyle.
Here are five steps you should take to reduce the risk:
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- Quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do to boost your heart health as smokers are twice as likely to die from a heart attack, compared to non-smokers.
- Take regular exercise (at least two hours 30 minutes a week for adults).
- Eat a healthy diet which is high-fibre and low fat with at least five portions of fruit and veg a day.
- Limiting alcohol consumption can also reduce your heart attack risk.
- Lose weight if you are overweight or obese.
A heart heart attack is a life-threatening emergency... dial 999 immediately if you suspect someone is having one.