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Shannon Hennig is a small business owner and a health and wellness marketing specialist.
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During the summer, she began to experience great fatigue, stiffness in her feet and legs, chest pains and difficulty breathing. She tested negative for COVID-19 and was rejected in the ER after being told she had a cold.
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In September, the 34-year-old man was hospitalized for six days and was diagnosed with congenital heart failure, a condition that mainly affects people aged 50 and over.
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Hennig realized that because she was worried about work, family and worrying about COVID-19, she neglected her own physical well-being and put her symptoms aside as if they were nothing serious.
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Now, Hennig is working to improve her health and warns other working mothers to check themselves more often to avoid making the same mistake.
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In early 2020, I was a busy 34-year-old businesswoman and working mother, living with my husband and son in Calgary, Canada. I have spent the past five years turning parallel consulting work into a thriving full-time business, working with professionals from the health and wellness industries in their brands and marketing.
I had a lot to be proud of. In my first year, generating revenue of more than six digits, I was on track to do the same in 2020. I had big plans to scale, build a more effective sales funnel and hire a team to support me.
My goal was to increase revenue by building a subscription program for private customers, while expanding my reach to small business owners through an online education and training program. I expected to start working with hundreds of new customers.
One day, in early September, I woke up at 4:30 am with a characteristic gurgle on my chest.
It looked and felt like the kind of thing you get when you’re fighting a bad cold in your chest.
All summer, I’ve been feeling more exhausted and more tired than ever. I have had cold and flu symptoms since July and gained 5.5 pounds in the previous two weeks. My legs and feet were constantly swollen and stiff, and I felt a noticeable shortness of breath when I went up the stairs.
I described my husband’s level of fatigue as almost “at the cellular level,” and no amount of naps or rest seemed to alleviate my exhaustion.
None of these symptoms made sense to me because I was active, had a healthy diet and had lost 25 pounds the year before. During quarantine due to COVID-19, I prioritized my health as best I could and thought I was controlling myself well.
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I was doing my best to navigate the reality of the pandemic and what it meant for my business, along with the challenge of my husband and I to educate our 6 year old son at home.
My busy daily routine started to impact my business significantly. I had no more time to dedicate myself to the client’s work and was struggling with deadlines that under normal circumstances were never an issue. I also had no idea where I would find time to teach my son.
When talking to colleagues and clients, it seemed that everyone was suffering from the same level of anxiety and exhaustion as me. It wasn’t like I was alone and unique in the physical and mental tribute of juggling all the balls, so I put my health aside.
My time was being devoted to creating the business of my dreams, but I still didn’t know that my lack of balance between work and personal life was unsustainable.
Moving on to that September morning, I knew I needed help. I had already taken the COVID-19 test and the results were negative, although my symptoms correspond to those widely associated with the virus. I even went to the emergency room ten days earlier complaining about the same problems, in addition to coughing up small amounts of blood, but I was sent home and said I had a cold.
In the emergency room, while watching my blood pressure rise to fatal levels and my ability to breathe less and less, I received my diagnosis.
The doctor told me that I had pulmonary edema, a condition in which his lungs were filled with fluid, and that I had congestive heart failure.
There I was. A 34-year-old woman, sitting alone in the emergency room because COVID-19 visitation restrictions did not allow my husband to stay with me, was told that now, at this moment, my heart was failing and I was dying.
What followed next was a whirlwind of emergency treatment to open my blood vessels, slow my heart and deliver oxygen to my body. An intravenous flow of heparin, an anticoagulant and nitroglycerin (a medicine that helps relax blood vessels and allows blood to flow more easily into the heart) stabilized me before being transferred to the cardiac intensive care unit.
I was hospitalized for six days, when I learned that my heart was beating at less than half the volume it should have. Other diagnoses showed that the primary cause was hypertension, which was not controlled for long.
When I accepted my diagnosis, I immediately went to Google to find out more about what I was experiencing and I was shocked to see that heart failure symptoms mimic many of COVID-19’s, including shortness of breath and difficulty breathing, fatigue and weakness and cough and persistent chest pain. I learned that congestive heart failure can also cause rapid weight gain by fluid retention, bloody coughing and swelling in the legs, ankles and feet.
Read More: Working mothers are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Here are 3 ways leaders can promote a supportive culture for working parents, according to a LinkedIn vice president
I had symptoms of heart failure over the summer, but I was too busy with my business and worrying about COVID-19 to think about anything else.
After a series of tests, including an echocardiogram and a cardiac magnetic resonance, I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, which is a weakening or thickening of the heart muscle to the point that I cannot pump blood properly.
When not being treated with medication, stress management, nutrition and exercise, it can progress to advanced heart failure.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), cardiomyopathy is generally not diagnosed, but up to 1 in 500 adults in the United States may be living with the disease. When not being treated with medication, stress management, nutrition and exercise, it can progress to advanced heart failure.
I knew that I would have to completely reevaluate all aspects of my life if I wanted to move on.
The stress of business ownership, maternity and COVID-19 pushed me to the brink of total collapse. I had many of the risk factors for cardiomyopathy, but I had no idea that this disease could affect someone my age with such deadly consequences.
Since my diagnosis, I have made changes to better balance my work and family obligations and be more in tune with what my body is trying to tell me. For other busy parents working at this time, I encourage you to check your own physical and mental health, just as you do with your loved ones, so that you don’t miss a life-threatening diagnosis like I almost did.
Shannon Hennig is a freelance writer and health and wellness marketing professional. She is the president of OpenInk Solutions, a company that helps health and wellness professionals build their personal brands and become thought leaders in the industries. follow her Twitter.
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