WHEN heartburn struck Angie Loving, she blamed it on the pizza and wine she'd had the night before – an easy mistake to make.
But it turned out to be her first and only symptom of a potentially fatal condition which left her just hours from death.
Angie was actually suffering a , which doctors said was brought on by , and she ended up having to relearn how to walk and talk at only 46 years old.
A working mum, Angie admits she was accustomed to and therefore never imagined it would be near-fatal.
She was also gearing up to marry her fiancé, Sam Abadir, 55, who she works with at the University of Kansas.
Angie, now 52, who lives in Olathe, Kansas City, , tells Sun Health: “We have a date night once a week and we went out for pizza and I had a glass of red wine with dinner.
“The next day I woke up and I was like, ‘Wow, I have really bad . That's weird'.
“I’m only 46... But I’m like, ‘I guess this is what it’s like to get older’.
“It was more constantly uncomfortable, compared with normal heartburn.”;
It was November 14, 2019, and Angie had a busy day tying things up at work before going on a girls' to .
She had an unrelated doctor's appointment that day.
“I was sitting there waiting for my appointment, which probably made me slow down enough to realise I have more symptoms than I was paying attention to,”; Angie says.
“I got really lightheaded. I just felt ‘off’.
“I remembered that I had read somewhere that was a heart attack symptom but thought, ‘That can’t be it’.”;
She Googled “ in women”; but, without any signs other than heartburn and lightheadedness, brushed the idea aside.
“I'm super active, I eat a great diet. This is not what's happening,”; she remembers thinking.
But Angie chose to drive to the hospital, which was only a couple of miles away, just to put her mind at ease.
“I told myself, ‘They'll tell me I'm fine and I'm getting on that plane and going to the beach tomorrow',”; she says.
But Angie almost didn’t make it – for she was, indeed, having a .
I guess my heart attack was really bad… They told my family that I was probably going to die in 48 hours
Angie Loving
The next thing she knew, she woke up in her car which had crashed into some bushes at a petrol station.
“I was obviously disoriented because I was having a and had passed out while driving,”; she says.
“I knew I was going to be sick so I opened my car door. I started throwing up and someone came and asked if I was OK.
“I’d read throwing up was one of the heart attack symptoms, so I told the person – who I later found out was a police officer – ‘to call 911, I’m having a heart attack’.”;
Agonising wait
Angie said by this point, the pain had “exploded”; and was now “all over”;.
“I was in so much pain that to be honest, all you want to do is close your eyes and make it all go away – basically you’d rather die than endure the pain,”; she says.
“No one should ever drive if they are feeling like that – that was a big mistake.
“But I lived by myself at the time as my child had grown up and my fiance lived in a different state. So if I hadn’t driven, and I'd gone home, I probably would have had a heart attack laying on my bed or the couch and no one would have found me until after I didn’t show up at the airport.”;
Doctors discovered Angie had suffered a , the most deadly kind.
It gets its name from the historical perception that it is often fatal, leading to the death of a partner.
Studies suggest only 12 per cent of people survive this type of heart attack — when the biggest artery to the organ is blocked — outside of hospital.
But surviving was just the beginning of her ordeal.
“They put three stents in [to treat the blockage],”; says Angie.
“I was really ill. I guess my heart attack was really bad.
“They told my family that I was probably going to die in 48 hours, but if I had any chance, they should transfer me to a major hospital in the city.”;
The family chose to transfer Angie to KU Medical Center, where doctors said her heart was in a bad way and she’d need a transplant.
“I couldn’t speak at the time, I didn’t know why, so I was given a clipboard to write my answers on,”; Angie recalls.
After agreeing to a heart transplant, she was put into a medically induced coma on a life support machine.
I remember complaining about the pain in my arm in the hospital, and the doctor looked at me and I think that’s the first time I realised... He said, ‘You’re supposed to be dead’.
Angie Loving
“I think during that time, my family really started to understand what it meant to be a recipient, that someone else had to immediately die to get a heart,”; Angie says.
“So my family and fiance had a moral struggle with wishing for a heart for me.”;
With no suitable heart for a transplant becoming available, Angie’s chances were looking grim.
“They were pushing timelines and keeping me on treatments longer than what protocol usually was,” she says. “The heart match never came.”;
Miraculously, however, Angie’s heart showed signs of working again just as doctors battled with whether to take her off life support.
“They took me off the machine because I couldn't be on it any longer and my own heart actually started,”; she says.
Angie was taken to intensive care for around a week, where she was on a ventilator. Her heart was extremely weak.
“They pretty much have to strap you to the bed so you don’t take it out, but it’s so uncomfortable,”; she says.
“You can’t move. If your nose itches, you can’t scratch it.”;
On waking up, she recalls: “You don't know what day it is. You know you're in the hospital. You don't know if it's been months, weeks or days.
“And then you have people telling you, ‘OK we're going to take you off but we don't know if you're going to make it’. There was a lot of fear.”;
As a complication of Angie’s surgery, a bundle of nerves in her neck were severed by an incision, causing her right arm to balloon.
“It was swollen, around 10 times its normal size,” Angie says.
“I found out I had a genetic blood disorder that makes me more susceptible to blood clots.
“So the worst part was, after they took me off the ventilator and I was able to breathe by myself, they told me I had to go back into surgery to get blood clots removed and I’d be back on the ventilator.”;
Relearning the basics
Angie had to then relearn how to speak, drink, eat, sit up and walk over a period of around 40 days in rehabilitation, both due to the heart attack and the blood clots in her arm.
“I had to relearn everything because my whole upper right side was paralysed, so I had to do everything with my left hand,”; she says.
“I was weak because I’d been in hospital so long and weighed less than 100lbs (45kg).
“I realised at that point how much we take the little things for granted.
“I remember complaining about the pain in my arm in the hospital, and the doctor looked at me and I think that’s the first time I realised... He said, ‘You’re supposed to be dead’.”;
Angie was discharged five weeks after her heart attack, but it took a year for her to feel anything close to her ‘normal’ self.
Within that year, Angie and Sam eloped on leap day in 2020, just before Covid sent the world into lockdown. They went on to share a vow renewal with family in March 2022.
Doctors still don’t know what caused the heart attack.
“The only thing they could attribute it to was the stress of my job,”; says Angie, who got promoted to the role of vice chancellor for human resources in August 2024.
“The genetic blood disorder might have contributed as well.
“I still have heart failure and probably will for the rest of my life.
“Without the medication I’m on, my heart wouldn’t be able to pump as strong as it does today.
“But I am grateful I get one more day and I try to not think about the next 20 years too much.”;
Instead, Angie just wants to get the message out to others to get checked for anything that might put you at risk of a heart attack.
She says she and her husband have managed to nudge more than 100 people to get their heart checked, with some 15 finding out they had major heart problems.
Angie says: “A couple of them didn't even get to leave the doctor – they had to go into emergency surgery and doing so has saved them from having to live through what my family lived through.”;
