Coronary artery disease
TO BEGIN, WE MUST present some unpleasant but essential facts:
• Coronary artery disease is the number one killer of African Americans.
• African American men develop coronary artery disease
earlier than white men.
• African American men with coronary artery disease are
more likely to die than white American men who suffer
from the same disease.
• African American women with coronary artery disease
are more likely to die than white women who suffer from
the same disease.
• African American smokers with coronary disease are at
higher risk of death than white American smokers with
coronary disease.
• African Americans who stop smoking or control their blood pressure decrease their risk of death from coronary artery disease.
• The more you know about coronary artery disease, the better the chances that you and your loved ones won’t be killed by it.
Not only is coronary artery disease-also known as cardiovascular disease, or CVD-the leading killer in America but if you’re African American the odds are one and a half times greater that you suffer from high blood pressure (or hypertension)-one of the leading risk factors contributing to CVD.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A lot of heart disease is pre
ventable and a lot of it is correctable. It can be stopped, or
mended, before you suffer a heart
attack that ‘will hospitalize you, and, in some cases, kill you. The fact is, what you know won’t kill you, and what you don’t, will.
Now that you’re with us, we’d like to tell you a story.
Though Reverend Asa Johnson had felt poorly for months, he hadn’t had much time to think about it. Church membership was falling off and he’d been working twice as hard as ever to turn that around. Worse, for all his efforts there hadn’t been much improvement, and some of the members were beginning to blame him.
Through all this Reverend Johnson was troubled by shortness of breath and frequent heaviness in the middle of his chest. Or he’d feel a nagging pain there that spread to his arms or sometimes to his back, and the pain didn’t seem to have any connection with what he’d been doing. Sometimes his breath came so hard he wanted to take to his bed. But when these symptoms came, he’d sigh and continue with what he was doing. “At sixtynine years old,” he’d say to himself, “a man’s got to expect a few aches and pains. Anyway, I’m a strong black man and a child of the King.” As for fatigue, well, he was working hard, but he was working for the Lord, as he’d always done and always would do. This was his life’s purpose. For twenty-five years he’d fought with all his heart for the church he served. He couldn’t afford to slow down now.
And, after all, he’d taken good care of himself all his life, he never smoked or drank, and he liked to boast, truthfully, that he’d never been sick a day in his life. Yes, he didn’t have time for much exercise and he’d put on a few pounds and, yes, his wife thought that he didn’t look well and wanted him to see his doctor. But he shook off her insistence, though with his usual patience. Sure, he would go in for an examination, he promised her over coffee one Tuesday morning-he’d go just as soon as he got this trouble at the church settled. She shook her head and said nothing. His health worried her, but he’d never been a man you could talk much sense into about such things.
The next day Reverend Johnson met with his board of directors and the Deacons of his church, hoping that together they could agree on the plan to increase membership that he’d been up several nights thinking and worrying about. So strong was this hope that just before the meeting Reverend Johnson had whis pered to himself: “Jesus, stay with me.” But twenty minutes into the meeting some of the deacons were fidgeting uneasily. The reverend looked sick. Once he bit his lip, as if he were fighting to keep something back, and his breathing became more and more difficult. Then, as Reverend Johnson, with obvious effort, came to the end of an eloquent appeal for his plan, suddenly and without a sound he fell hard to the floor, unconscious.
He died forty-five minutes later in the emergency room of the community hospital. He’d suffered a massive heart attack.