Almost 16 years ago, back when Eve Walker was just 28 years old, she still recalls – she was a size six and a modern dancer who practiced often. She had two young sons and worked in a consulting firm. Life was going well for her.
Then, it happened out of the blue. Walker suddenly struggled to walk up a single flight of stairs. She couldn’t understand why, considering her healthy lifestyle, but she put it off as her simply not being in the best shape.
But just a few days after the stair incident, she felt a tingling feeling begin in her leg. Over the course of the day, it moved up the side of her body, which was when Walker finally realized. There was a bigger problem at hand.
She called her neighbor and asked them to take her to the hospital.
That was when Walker finally realized: she was suffering from a heart attack.
Walker was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a medical condition that causes the muscles in the heart to enlarge and thicken, making it difficult for blood to pump and flow easily. This condition can lead to other heart conditions like abnormal heart rhythm or even heart failure.
What stunned Walker wasn’t just the fact that she, at 28 years of age, was already experiencing her first heart attack. It was also that these heart diseases were hereditary – and yet her family had never mentioned any of these problems to her before.
Walker remembered that her grandmother had suffered from a heart attack – but that was when her grandmother was already in her 90s.
After Walker’s own health incident, however, she went to her family medical records and began to dig.
As it turns out, Walker’s own mother had hypertension and an enlarged heart. She was prescribed the same exact medication that Walker’s doctor prescribed to her to keep her from suffering another heart attack.
Walker’s older sister had passed away when she was 16, and Walker was just 12. Her sister’s cause of death was also heart disease.
Given Walker’s newly discovered family history of heart problems, her cardiologist wanted her to get an implantable defibrillator, to avoid having another heart attack or dangerous heart rhythm. But Walker refused. She was only 28. She didn’t want to have to rely on something so “not cute” or be considered as a “handicap” because of this.
But over the years, Walker’s fear of triggering heart failure from exercise crept into her routine. She stopped dancing, stopped doing any activity that would give her adrenaline just to protect her heart.
In 2012, when Walker turned 40, she realized how far she’d let her health go. She was a single mom going to school full-time, but unable to do anything physical because she feared that her heart would fail on her.
Feeling discouraged, Walker decided that she wanted to undergo a “mommy makeover” in 2014. Leading up to the operation though, Walker had to undergo a series of tests to ensure that her heart was strong enough to get her through the recovery.
On her stress test – that simply involved walking on a treadmill to assess your heart health – Walker nearly fainted after just a minute of walking.
That was when Walker realized that she had to get the implantable defibrillator if she ever wanted to do any physical activity again in her life. “After years of encouragement from doctors and my cardiologist, I finally got [it]. I never wanted to do it, but after I did I was so happy,” Walker admitted. “I felt the weight lift off of my shoulders, and I found a new sense of peace.”
It has taken Walker a couple years to work up to having a normal activity level – hitting the gym every day for at least 30 minutes – but she keeps herself motivated by thinking about the body she “used to have, and know that now, it’s just about doing [her] best.”
She now encourages everyone to take charge of their health by investigating any genetic medical conditions and learning how to combat them early, before it’s too late to do so. Walker said proudly, “I want to be a champion for my sister, for myself, and for other women. I’m going to keep sharing my story to whoever wants to hear it!”
