A Loss for Our Community

The pool will be empty for a while.

Ms. Debbie, the beloved swimming teacher in our community, has died. She had also taught math at the local high school for thirty years.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Debbie went for her usual run. She came back to the school and was taking a shower in the locker room when she collapsed of a massive heart attack.

How could she just die?

She was only 56. She was thin and she was in great shape. Heart attacks are supposed to happen to old, overweight men who are couch potatoes and former smokers. Not to women in the prime of their life.

Debbie left behind a devastated husband and seven children who now have to learn to live without their wife and mother.

As I wrote in my last post about cholesterol – it can be a killer. Unfortunately, we all assume that if our cholesterol is a little high, it’s no big deal. As you know, there are probably thousands of people with cholesterol readings above 150 mg/dL who live into their eighties and nineties. But, why take that chance?

According to Dr. William Clifford Roberts, the executive director of the Baylor Heart and Lung Institute and longtime editor of the Journal of Cardiology, “the only absolute prerequisite for a fatal heart attack is a total cholesterol level greater than 150 mg/dL.” You can be thin, you can exercise like crazy, you can live a calm and stress-free life, but if your cholesterol is above 150 mg/dL, you are “skating on thin ice.”

If you don’t know your cholesterol reading, go get it checked.

If you do know your cholesterol reading and it is above 150 mg/dL, change your diet and get it down! You may not be afraid of death, but don’t make your family bear the brunt of your unwillingness to change.