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Susan Lucci reflected on what it was like when she suffered from a heart attack in 2018 in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife at the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women Red Dress Collection Concert on Wednesday, February 1. The actress, 76, said that she wanted to include her “Empower Your Heart” jewelry line as a way of “saying thank you to the American Heart Association,” after her own experience with a heart attack.
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The All My Children star revealed that she got tested after learning hearing an interview where a woman said that the symptoms that women experience during a heart attack are different from men’s. “I avoided a near-fatal heart attack,” Susan told HollywoodLife. “I also was very lucky to have people getting me to the hospital right away.”
Susan opened up about exactly what the symptoms she experienced were, and luckily the doctor was able to operate quickly. “At that hospital, a wonderful, wonderful cardiologist let me know that I had a 90% blockage in my main artery and a 75% blockage in the adjacent,” she said. “I had no idea except that I felt like an elephant pressing on my chest. And he put two stents in that night. And I was released the next day.”
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Thankfully, the mother of two was able to recover, but the healthcare providers also told Susan that the heart attack she experienced was a “widowmaker,” and she may not have survived if she didn’t act as quickly as she had. “I was told by the nurses had I not come in, [they were] very sure that I wasn’t going to wake up if I had just gone home,” she revealed.
Susan teamed up with the jewelry brand Tiary for her “Empower Your Heart” line, which will donate 25% of each sale to the American Heart Association’s Life is Why campaign through December 31, 2023. Susan told HL that it was a “dream” to get to raise money for the American Heart Association.