When I was in nursing school at UCLA in the 1970s, the focus was on a total patient care concept where the patient was not just a “diagnosis.” It was important to consider their physical needs as well as their emotional/mental, social, educational, and sexual orientation needs as well as including their entire family’s issues.

After graduating and passing the licensing board, I started my career on a step-down unit where the cardiac patients came after they survived their heart attacks and were grappling with what it meant to have a cardiac diagnosis. They were often quite frightened since they were aware they only had “one heart.” Their care included lots of education because the physicians expected them to change just about every aspect of their lives to manage their risk factors for heart disease, including stopping smoking, losing weight, completely changing their diet to lower their cholesterol and blood pressures, reduce their stress levels, and to exercise at least five or six times per week. They also were taking at least five medications for the first time in their lives.

Educating and helping these patients deal with all those factors seemed to encompass all I had studied in terms of total patient need. So, I stayed in cardiovascular nursing for 45 years. I went from post-heart care to coronary intensive care, and then landed in outpatient cardiac rehabilitation where I spent the last 35 years of my nursing career.

I had the pleasure of encouraging women as they recovered from acute heart events and looked to what it meant for their future lives. Some of the ideas I focused on were how they’d need to learn to accept help—and to ask for help from their family members and friends—and how they’d need to say no, and to let go of perfection. This was often very hard because so many of these women saw themselves as the one keeping everything together for everyone else. They had to relearn how to listen to their bodies. Many of them felt let down or betrayed by their hearts because they’d developed heart disease.

Regarding women and heart disease, I have seen some improvement since I graduated from nursing school in 1973. There is definitely more awareness now that women’s symptoms can be quite different than men’s. Women have finally begun to be part of research studies, but there is still a long way to go.

I am amazed and saddened to hear stories of women who have had to fight to get their symptoms recognized and to get the same standard of care as men. The same stories I heard in the early 1980s are still being told today. Finally, there are so many unforgettable women who I remember vividly. I am grateful for the honor of being their nurse.