VU breakfast kicks off American Heart Month

VALPARAISO | Nicole Caylor was 29, physically fit, and in her fourth week of basic training in the Army, when the seemingly impossible happened.

She had a heart attack.

The Valparaiso resident described her harrowing experience to more than 300 people at the annual Valpo Goes Red breakfast in Valparaiso University's Harre Union ballroom Wednesday.

The event, a fundraiser for the American Heart Association, is part of the Go Red For Women movement to raise awareness of heart disease, the No. 1 killer of women in the country.

Caylor said she was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri when she began experiencing symptoms of a heart attack -- nausea, pain down her left arm and chest pressure. She was told she was just having a "panic attack," she said.

She continued trying to carry on as normal, even marching several miles with 75 pounds of equipment on her back. Eventually, she collapsed and was dropped off at an emergency room, where her heart rate was registered at hundreds of beats per minute.

"They told me I was lucky to be alive," she said.

Now 31, she's received a clean bill of health.

A heart attack can happen to anyone, at any time, Caylor said.

"This isn't something that just happens to our dads, grandfathers or uncles," she said. "Each and every one of us is affected by heart disease."

Keynote speaker Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and chief executive officer of Frontier Communications, said she learned firsthand how stress can push a person to the edge when she was traveling extensively for a former job.

"If ever I was going to have a heart attack, it was then," she said.

Yet the lessons she learned as a child from her parents while growing up in New Jersey enabled her to balance a high-powered career with being a wife and mother, she said.

She walks six miles a day, four days a week, gets massages, reads, watches movies and surrounds herself with a support system of family and friends.

"Our bodies and our mental health deserve our care and attention," Wilderotter said.

She's also able to leave her work at the office.

"At work, I'm a whirling dervish. But when I'm with my family, I'm present and in the moment."