Listen to your body in matters of the heart
Here’s a personal historical milestone:
On Jan. 17, 2008, I was emceeing the Post Falls Chamber’s Annual Awards Banquet. During the evening I felt a bit clammy and muddleheaded and a little short of breath but finished the event. I told my husband that I was feeling “odd” and didn’t want to go home, I wanted to go to the emergency room at Kootenai Health. That decision very likely saved my life.
At the ER, within minutes the doctor told me the bad news was that I was having a heart attack, but the good news was that I was at the hospital. In less than an hour I was receiving two coronary arterial stents. I was 55 years old. Today I’m 66, and since 2008 I’ve enjoyed 4,016 bonus days. Every day is a blessing.
The moral of the story is to listen to your body. Heart attack symptoms rarely appear as they do in the movies or on TV. I had no arm or chest pain but someone else might have those symptoms.
Don’t wait for Heart Health Month in February to learn about heart disease, which claims twice as many lives every year as all forms of cancer combined. www.heart.org.
•••
We’ve enjoyed some gorgeous sunny days recently, the lawns are bare and green and it deceptively feels like spring is just around the corner. For those of you spending your first winter in North Idaho, don’t be fooled by Mother Nature. We have a good two months of winter and several snow storms to come so don’t put away the snow shovels just yet.
•••
Random trivia I meant to include earlier in the month ... Janette Mason Compton was Kootenai County’s first baby of the new year in 1932. Most interesting is that she didn’t arrive until Jan. 6. Born at the family home on 10th Street and Boyd Avenue in Coeur d’Alene, the list of gifts she received for being the first ... a $10 savings account and a dozen chickens, were quite impressive during the Depression.
•••
Lake City Playhouse presents “She Loves Me” Thursday through Jan. 27. www.lakecityplayhouse.org
The Coeur d’Alene Symphony, alongside the North Idaho Youth Symphony, perform Classical Family Fun, Bolero and More on Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Kroc Theater. www.cdasymphony.org
•••
Happy birthday today to Kenny Peterson, Anita Millward, John Keener, Shelly Robson, Kelly Blaski, Charlie Kimball, Mary Mort, Nick Dimico, Bill Miller (60!) and Elaine Cook. Tomorrow Eden Irgens, Michelle Martens and Charles Newman will celebrate. Kenna Scott, Travis Chaney, Aubrey Davis, Mike Webb, BJ Holinka, Suzanne Courtney, Amanda Kralicek, Kristy Walsh, Mike Taylor and Nina Tikalsky share birthdays on Friday. Austin Isakson, Wade McLean, Roy Carlson, Gavin Krieg and Terry Drapeau take another trip around the sun on Saturday. WWII veteran James Loer (95!), Bob Short, Mary Spridgeon and Larry Sackett celebrate birthdays on Sunday. Ryan Davis, Chelsea Camarata, Nicole Jones, Carrie Beals and Mary Crosby blow out the candles on Monday. Eric English, Analisa Raynor, Nora Horn, Larry Spencer, Angie Phillips, Glen Abbott and Peggy Brothers will celebrate on Jan. 22.
•••
Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email mainstreet@cdapress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kerrithoreson.