Close to my heart

LOML’s aunt used to say there weren’t too many reasons for old folks to get together unless it was to attend a funeral or a grandchild’s wedding. Every time she said something to that effect, I thought it must be H E double uppers and lowers to get old. She might have been about my age at the time, resigned to what many considered the rewards for making it past the age of 60.

Not too many years ago declining health was something many accepted as a fact of life as they aged. Aches, pains, heart problems, digestive upsets and various other debilitating ailments. Auntie was 68 when she died. She was an elderly woman at that age. She’d lived through a depression, a world war, the boom years in the ’40s and ’50s, raised four children and watched as the young folks around her turned the world on its ear during the 1960s summers of peace and love. She was a wonderful person but had bought into the theory of advancing years meaning poor health. She was a mother, a grandmother, an aunt and great aunt and a wife. She didn’t watch her weight. Outside of housework, she didn’t exercise. She’d probably never had her blood pressure checked. Heart disease was something men suffered.

On June 3 I’ll be participating in the Ride for Heart. LOML, COM times two and I will be covering the 50 kilometre course at the annual Ride for Heart in Toronto. I am now a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a great aunt and a wife. I ride because I don’t believe declining health is a symptom of aging. I ride because it’s what I can do to help support a cause that is very close to my own heart. I ride because in my life I have watched heart disease hack its way through the lives of my friends and family. My grandfathers, my father-in-law, my dear Dad, LOML, my great niece, three cousins, my neighbour and close friends, all victims of heart disease. Some of them were genetically predisposed to problems and some of them had made poor lifestyle choices.

Look around the corners of your life and make a note of everyone you know whose life has been complicated by heart disease. We all know someone who “got shipped to Kingston” for a stent (full metal jacket, as Bernie G. called it) or bypass surgery. Maybe it’s closer than someone who is the neighbour of a friend. You’re probably reading this with someone who has high blood pressure or someone who takes medication for high cholesterol. Perhaps the young family next door’s newborn arrived with heart problems, congenital heart disease. Maybe the woman whose desk is next to yours at work had a heart valve repaired. Have a good look at the smokers, the heavy drinkers, the overweight, the drug abusers. They’re in a holding pattern for heart disease. There’s at least one someone in our lives who has a pacemaker or someone who had a blood clot or had a heart attack or a stroke and there may even be someone who has had a heart transplant.

According to The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, “Heart disease and stroke take the lives of one in three Canadians. Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women. Nine out of 10 Canadians have at least one risk factor for heart disease or stroke.” Your donation to the 2012 Ride for Heart works to change these statistics and promotes awareness and prevention of heart disease and stroke.

Heart disease, my friends and my family is why I ride. If you know me, and many of you do, find me and make a donation to my 2012 ride. On June 3, I’ll be in Toronto and at 7:15 in the morning I’ll begin my 50 km Ride for Heart.

I’m riding for you!

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca