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Listen to your body, life is a blessing

by KERRI THORESON
| January 29, 2025 1:00 AM

In January 2008, I was emceeing the Post Falls Chamber's Annual Banquet at Templin's Resort. During the evening, I felt a bit clammy and muddleheaded, but finished the event.

I told Bert 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 saved my life. 

At the ER, within minutes, the cardiologist on duty told me the bad news was that I was having a heart attack but the good news was that I was at the hospital. Within 30 minutes I was receiving two coronary stents. I was 55 years old and just two weeks into my first term on the city council. 

Getting to the emergency room at the outset allowed the trained medical professionals to insert stents and prevent permanent damage.

When I speak to groups about heart health, I emphasize trusting your gut feeling that something is wrong. Even if it’s difficult to articulate the abstract like a sense of impending doom, keep trying until someone listens. In women especially, chest pains are not the norm. Debilitating fatigue was one of my most pronounced symptoms.

Coronary heart disease is America’s No. 1 killer, claiming twice as many people as all forms of cancer combined. It's not just a man’s disease or an old person’s disease.

Being proactive and assertive where medical care is concerned is vital. I continue to be grateful and humbled by the knowledge that for whatever reason I was given a second chance at life. 

Today, I'm 72, and since January 2008, I've enjoyed 6,582 bonus days. Every day is a blessing. Listen to your body. Life is good. www.heart.org.

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Happy birthday today to Mara Parent (100!), Fern Glass, Rachel Riggs, Cindy Peugh, Allen Hildebrant, Tayler Ekness, Don Waddell and David Gerzina Sr. Tomorrow, Jim Custer, Shannon Damiano, Mel Palmer, Sierra Graham, Brylee Dresser (21!) and Helen Sargent hear the birthday song. Jennifer Alexander, Robert Brown, Cassidy Peacock, Sandy Scarlett, Erik Salvador, Linda Wolff, Mary Bell and Bernadette Myers who take another trip around the sun on the last day of January. On the first day of February my first born, Alyssa Perry Stromberg, shares the date with Laura Little, Colleen Provost, Leslie Tibbs, Tonya Myers, Kristi Rietze, Susan Cook, Deedie Beard, James Ownbey, Jesse Anglen and Jamie Benner. On Sunday, Ron Koontz, Donna Wemple, Randy Medlock, Chad VanBrunt and Seth Yost light up the candles. And on Monday Jackie Jameson, Leslie Damiano, Cindy Spence (70!), Denise Lundy, Dawn Magness, Kay Burke and Donna Armbruster celebrate. Cindy Mead, Connie Johnson, Chariesse Gross and Nancy Wilson do the birthday dance Feb. 4. 

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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 thoreson.kerri@gmail.com.