Arlington Heights Woman Gives Her Heart to Go Red for Women

Barbara Stensland will be sporting a lot of red clothing on Friday to show her support for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign.

She’s hoping the village of Arlington Heights and residents show their support too.

AHA started National Wear Red Day, held on Feb. 1 in 2003, as a way to bring attention to cardiovascular disease, according to its website. A year later, it started the Go Red for Women campaign to educate women about heart disease, the site states. It marks the kickoff of  Heart Month.

Stensland recently asked the village board to participate in Wear Red Day by displaying red at village hall and asked individuals to support the day.

It is a deeply personal quest for Sensland to raise awareness of women and heart disease because she is a survivor.

“The question that haunted us was ‘why did this happen?’ I had done everything I should to prevent this. I ate right, did not smoke, did not drink, exercised three times a week and had no family history of heart disease,” Stensland said.

To this day, she and her family do not have an answer. “No one can explain why it happened but it did,” she said.

The Arlington Heights resident was 43 in 2008 when she had the shock of her life. Stensland had been exercising when she began experiencing a shortness of breath and chest pains. The symptoms subsided but came back the next day.

Her husband, a Skokie paramedic, took her to Northwest Community Hospital’s emergency room.  The couple thought she was having an asthma attack.

Stensland was immediately admitted and underwent an emergency angiogram, which found she had a 98 percent blockage in the left coronary artery. The condition is called the “widow maker,” she said.

She underwent surgery for a double bypass.

“The question that haunted us was ‘why did this happen?’ I had done everything I should to prevent this. I ate right, did not smoke, did not drink, exercised three times a week and had no family history of heart disease,” Stensland said.

To this day, she and her family do not have an answer.

Stensland spend months healing physical and emotionally. Her family _ her husband Al and daughter, Katie_ also had to heal. Her husband was haunted by the thought of not immediately recognizing his wife’s symptoms, she said.

“Even he didn’t realize that I was having a heart attack. He assumed, like we all do, that you have crushing chest pain,” she said.  But he kept insisting she go to the ER, which saved her life, she said.

Her family struggled with a lot of emotions and issues following her heart attack. “For my family, the emotional trauma was almost as horrific as the physical trauma,” she said.

What Stensland hopes to do is prevent other families from going through that trauma and educating women about heart attacks.

She will be at Mariano’s Fresh Market, 802 E. Northwest Highway, on Friday, February 1 to meet and greet people and provide information about warning signs of a heart attack.

“I wear my Go Red for Women pin on my coat every single day,” Stensland said. “I have taken it off my coat and given it to people. It means that much to me.”