BAYTOWN, Texas — A Baytown woman is sharing her story after doctors told her that she was hours away from having a massive heart attack and dying.
Retired English teacher Melissa Sanchez said she had no idea her heart was the problem when she started seeing doctors about the pain she was feeling in her jaw.
Sanchez, 62, saw several doctors, but the pain remained for months.
"I eventually went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. He diagnosed me with TMJ," Sanchez said.
One day, in October, the pain became too much for her to bear and she went to a local emergency room.
"That day in October, the pain began to radiate down into my chest and my back," she said.
They turned her away and told her they thought it was an infection.
Hours later, she went back -- and thank goodness she did. A doctor told her she could have died because she was having a heart attack.
"You can have a heart attack and not even know it," Sanchez said.
She was in the middle of one and was approaching death.
"If she had delayed this any longer, this would’ve been catastrophic," Dr. Raghu Muppidi said.
Muppidi was the interventional cardiologist that was working in the emergency room at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital the day Sanchez came in.
They did an EKG and found the problem.
"This artery is just on the verge of completely collapsing at that point," Muppidi said.
Sanchez had a nearly 90% blockage in the main artery in her heart.
"It was that left main artery, the one they call the widow-maker," Muppidi said.
Within an hour, doctors put in a stint and saved her life.
"I had no idea. I thought my heart was fine," Sanchez said. "A lot of people have this notion that if you’re having a heart attack, you’re going to clutch your chest and fall down and be unconscious and it’s going to be a dramatic way that it’s going to present with, and that might be true sometimes, but not all the time."
Since the incident, Sanchez changed her life. She lost 50 pounds and stopped smoking.
"I smoked for 47 years," Sanchez said.
She hopes her story will inspire others to pay more attention to their health and their heart.
"Anything that persists, please check it out. Ask your doctor questions and bring up your heart if they don’t," she said.