MUNSTER | Earlier this year, Cynthia Williams had been experiencing shortness of breath and severe chest pain.

Two weeks prior, Williams, then 40, of Schererville, had given birth to her daughter, Kennadie, and because it had been almost two decades since her last child was born, she thought her body was just experiencing trauma from being a new mother and breastfeeding. Still, she had a nagging feeling that she should attend her two–week checkup a day early.

Now she knows that feeling saved her life, because at the checkup she was told her lungs had collapsed and she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

"I was blindsided," said Williams, 41, who also is the mother of two sons, 21 and 17, and another daughter, 13. "I had never been a smoker. I had no diabetes, (no) high blood pressure, (no) hypertension."

Williams shared her story Wednesday afternoon at the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women event at Franciscan Physicians Hospital, letting attendees know how the hospital and its employees saved her life.

The event was structured similar to an open house, with refreshments, a booth for free blood pressure screenings and various tables scattered with information about heart disease.

Dr. Hilton Hudson, the hospital's chief of cardiac and thoracic surgery, also informed attendees about some common myths about heart disease, such as that women don't get heart attacks. He said that isn't true, but the symptoms for heart attacks for women can be different than men, including nausea and pain in areas not commonly associated with a heart attack, such at the jaw or neck.

Hudson said prevention is the best treatment and women shouldn't smoke, need to exercise and keep conditions such as diabetes under control.

"The more you know, the longer you're going to live," Hudson said.