According to figures from the Irish Heart Foundation, one in four women die from heart disease and stroke in Ireland – the same number as men. Despite these statistics, research has shown that heart disease in women has been under-researched, under-diagnosed, and under-treated for far too long.
It is exactly this lack of awareness that led Joan Wogan MacDonald to want to speak out about her experiences of a heart attack in early 2021, as part of the Irish Heart Foundation’s Her Heart Matters campaign.
“I had the heart attack in March. The heart attack itself wasn’t very exciting,” Joan, a Drogheda-based mother of three – Daniel, 31, Emma, 22, and Robert, 17 – explains. “But I would like people to be aware, women especially, of the symptoms that had happened beforehand.”
Previous to the evening in March when she had a heart attack, Joan, who was 48 at the time, had put the symptoms she had been experiencing for some months down to menopause. “I just thought, ‘it’s time now this happened, I’m 48, it must be the symptoms of the menopause…