Hi all!

 

This is my third Heart Walk and first as a team coach. It would be easy to just say that 9 out of 10 people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital die and just ask for a donation. But that is not the story here.

 

It's not just sudden death. It's the slow debilitation of heart disease. It's the cost, personal, emotional, especially to families, and financial that heart disease carries.

 

Very few of my family have been spared. My adoptive father had two heart attacks, the second happening three days before, and leading to open heart surgery on the day before I took my ACT exam in high school. My aunt had a heart attack, and died two years later of congestive heart failure from the damage of her heart attack. My uncle died of sudden cardiac arrest at age 50. My biological father had rheumatic heart disease leading to a valve replacement surgery. And my biological mother died of a sudden massive stroke. I never got the chance to meet her.

 

I don't think it can be overstated how much the American Heart Association has done and continues to do to save lives, improve treatment, and better the lives of people living with heart disease. 

 

Heart disease is the number one cause of premature death. And though there are many factors that lead to heart disease, one fact is true. Heart disease doesn't discriminate based on age, or race, or gender, or most any factor you care to name. And healthy living is no panacea. Alberto Salazar, a famous marathoner and track coach who won the Boston Marathon in 1982 in the famous "Duel in the Sun", suffered a heart attack during training at age 47 and was saved by CPR.

 

The AHA is the leading advocate for saving lives and improving heart care. So consider making a donation. Or joining in a Heart Walk. Or becoming a Heart Walk Team coach. It's a near guarantee that you or someone you know will be touched by the work that the AHA does.

 

I Walk to Save Lives.

 

Dean