RICHMOND —
Speaking from a lifetime of personal experience, author/lecturer Rudy Wilson Galdonik admonished a crowd of about 75 at the fourth annual “Take Your Health To Heart” event to take a proactive role in taking care of their hearts.
The event, sponsored by Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center and Central Baptist Hospital, was conducted Thursday evening at the Pattie A. Clay Health and Education Center in Richmond.
Galdonik, who tempers a serious message with touches of gentle humor, recounted her own struggles with congenital heart disease to illustrate the necessity of taking control of one’s own heart health.
The program, touted as a “women’s night out” event, was aimed mostly at a female audience, but a handful of men attended as well. It was part of an annual series to promote heart health, marking February as American Heart Month.
Galdonik, who was born with a hole in her heart, said after she married and moved away from her native New York suburb to Minnesota, she began to realize symptoms of irregular heart rhythms she was experiencing signaled a serious problem. After reading an article in a national magazine, she said she became convinced she needed open heart surgery and went to see a doctor.
Without even touching a stethoscope to her chest, she said the doctor diagnosed her problem as a symptom of separation from her mother and advised her to go home and have a baby.
Undaunted, she sought out a cardiologist, who recognized that she had a problem. In a humorous aside, Galdonik said she was not satisfied with her first cardiologist because, looking down at his head while he held the stethoscope to her chest, she noticed a head full of dandruff.
“I figured, if he didn’t know he had dandruff … how smart could he be?” She told the audience.
A second cardiologist performed open-heart surgery when she was 25 years old. She realized that if she had taken the first doctor’s advice, ignored her symptoms and gotten pregnant, she would have died.
“When you know that something is wrong with your body, pursue it,” she said. “Sometimes you just know when something’s not right.”
After her surgery, she and her husband had two children, but her husband fell ill with lung cancer. While her husband never smoked, she said she is convinced that his illness was the result of breathing second-hand smoke from living with two parents who were heavy smokers. She became a widow at 42 when her husband succumbed to his disease.
After marrying a second time, she discovered, at age 47, that she was experiencing intermittent bouts of fever and chills, which her doctor diagnosed as the flu. After a round of unsuccessful treatment with antibiotics, she again realized that something serious was wrong and sought out another cardiologist who diagnosed her with a heart infection.
After the infection was cleared up, she underwent a second heart operation that included replacement of two heart valves with mechanical ones, and the implantation of a pacemaker.
Noting that heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in America, Galdonik noted that there are several risk factors for heart disease, including age, gender, heredity and race that cannot be controlled, but others that can.
She advised that everyone know their cholesterol numbers, blood pressure, blood sugar levels and body mass index and work with their doctors to control these factors.
A factor she particularly stressed is smoking cessation.
“If you smoke, make the last cigarette before you came here your last cigarette,” she advised. She said she realizes that quitting is not easy, but urged people to keep trying and get whatever help they need, because the negative health effects of smoking can be greatly reduced and even reversed over time.
Galdonik, who said she works out at least five times a week, also stressed that regular exercise, under a doctor’s supervision, is important.
Finally, Galdonik emphasized the need for regular medical checkups to monitor one’s overall health and medical progress.
Galdonik is author of a book of humorous essays, “Take Heart!” and has authored inspirational essays in several publications. She serves on numerous health and heart-related organizations and was the recipient of the 2003 American Heart Association’s “Heart of the Year” award. She also has worked as human resources manager of a major medical center.
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Rudy Wilson Galdonik spoke Thursday at “Take Your Health to Heart” in Richmond.
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