February is heart month, a time to raise awareness about cardiovascular health. With the goal to encourage more women to focus on heart health, I’m featuring an excerpt today from a book by Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart, a 2022 American Heart Association Go Red For Women National Spokesperson. In her memoir Sonata For A Damaged Heart, Kisha shares her near-death experience after her second pregnancy and the racial disparities in the US healthcare system that contributed to it.
A woman’s journey from heart failure: Book excerpt from Sonata For A Damaged Heart
This excerpt is from Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart’s Sonata For A Damaged Heart: A Young Mother’s Journey of Survival After a Near Fatal Heart Attack. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
None of the medical professionals I consulted had been able to answer with certainty the nagging question that troubled my thoughts and haunted my dreams—if I continue with this pregnancy will I have another heart attack and die? It was a loaded, complicated, question-begging kind of question. Had I asked that question because I secretly hoped for an answer that would allow me to avoid making a decision myself?
One January night, a patient threatened me with a sharp instrument. I was able to calm her, but the incident left me shaken. That night, after returning home from my night shift, I stood at the kitchen window in the quiet, pre-dawn hour and watched the palm fronds bend and sway in the breeze. In the shadowy gray light, their graceful movements seemed timed to the rhythm of some ethereal dirge. Lulled into a meditative state, I closed my eyes and began to pray for guidance. If I was willing to put my life on the line by continuing the pregnancy, if I truly wanted this child, then I needed to do the best I could to stay safe and healthy.
I prayed for forbearance and wisdom and courage. And in the stillness of prayer, I heard my heart beat strongly, steadily drowning out death’s whisper. In that moment of reverie, I let go of my need for certainty and opened a doorway to possibility and felt a rush of gratitude—both for the heart attack that had sent me on a life trajectory I could have never imagined before and for this new, unexpected pregnancy that had given me another chance to reaffirm who I’d become since.
Confronting death the first time had enabled me to discover a wellspring of strength I never knew I had. Confronting death again brought clarity: I wanted this child and would do everything I could to keep it, but, in the end, would put my own health and life first. If the moment came to decide between the baby and me, no matter when it did, I promised I’d choose myself. I needed to be alive for the children I already had. I needed to be alive to accomplish something else with my life, not yet knowing exactly what that something else was.
By the end of the fourth month, I could no longer hide my pregnancy. My baby bump protruded like a large melon, insistently pushing into view through every loose-fitting garment I used to disguise my condition. I couldn’t pretend that I’d simply gained weight; the reason was obvious.
Not long after the winter holidays I told my parents, my best friend, Jamie, and my sister-in-law, Kelly, about my pregnancy. I would have confided in Kelly earlier, since she’d been unfailingly understanding of every controversial decision I’d made. But she was also pregnant, two and a half months further along than I was, and with her first. I didn’t want to distract from her experience. It turns out, she’d already guessed.
“That’s great, Kisha,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
Her question conveyed the fact she understood the dilemma I’d faced. I was so relieved that I burst into tears.
“How far along are you?” she asked.
“Twenty weeks,” I said, wiping my face with the tissue she’d handed me.
“There’s still time, if you change your mind,” she said. “And I’m here for you, whatever you decide.”
“Thanks, but I’ve already told my mother she’ll soon have a granddaughter,” I said.
Earlier that week, when I’d gone for my checkup, the technician told me she could tell the sex from the sonogram. At first, I said I didn’t want to know, but then I changed my mind. When she told me I was having a girl, a wave of shock came over me. Until that moment, I’d assumed I was having a boy, as much out of familiarity as anything else. Having been a tomboy as a girl and now raising two sons, I was used to the behavior of boys. A girl! How was I supposed to mother a girl? Soon enough, doubt morphed into the strangest sensation that having a girl was exactly what I never knew I’d always wanted. Another falling leaf, another kind of letting go had opened into possibility.
“I bet she’s excited,” Kelly said.
“Excited isn’t the half of it,” I said and laughed. “She told me she’s the reason why I’m having a girl.”
“What?” Kelly couldn’t stop laughing. “Has she forgotten her basic biology?”
“My mother has the ultimate faith. She told me she’d prayed and prayed, lit candles in more churches than she could count, gone on pilgrimages to beg for blessings and to plead for my health. Finally, her prayers were answered with the miracle of my having a baby girl. Funny thing is, after everything that’s happened, this baby feels like a miracle to me, too.”
About author Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart
Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart is a wife, mother of three, nurse, heart attack survivor, and a national advocate for heart health dedicated to improving the quality of cardiovascular health care for everyone. Since her heart attack in 2011 at age 31, she has conducted extensive research about the specific health risks that women, particularly Black women, face.
A dynamic, nationally recognized speaker on ways to improve heart health through lifestyle changes and a fierce advocate for systemic changes in the health care system to guarantee equity and social justice for all, Kisha, a nurse with a unique perspective and survivor on a mission, was a national spokeswoman chosen in 2022 by the American Heart Association (AHA) to educate the public about the risks of cardiovascular disease.
Top photo courtesy of Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart.