Surviving Heart Disease: Local Women Share their Stories

People here in Middle Georgia and all over the United States are sporting red today for “Go Red for Women Day.”  This is a time to bring awareness to heart disease.

Every 30 seconds someone in America has a heart attack and each year 435,000 of those are women, according to the Women’s Heart Foundation.  Macon native, Gini Lamback, beat the odds and today can say she’s a survivor.

“Everyday I’m thankful.  Really you wake up in the morning and you think wow another day, I have another day,” said Gini Lamback, heart disease survivor.

The Women’s Heart Foundation reports, heart disease is the number one killer of women, taking the lives of more females every year than all cancers combined.  Gini feels lucky she didn’t become a part of that growing statistic since doctors said her heart was healthy.  She later found out she had a 100% blockage on her main artery that whole time, something most people don’t live through.  Gini says she owes everything to her cardiologist Dr. Jones.

“We have risk factors just like men do and as we get older in fact our risk factors increase,” said Dr. Zoe Jones, Cardiologist at the Albert Luce Jr. Heart Institute.