Prioritize Your Priorities

No one plans to have a heart attack or expects to suddenly find out they have heart disease, especially if they’ve had no symptoms leading up to the diagnosis. So when it happens there is often the sense that everything in life has been turned upside down.

Flora Leamer of Buffalo, New York was about to leave for a vacation when her doctor found a 95% blockage in her heart and scheduled her for open heart surgery. “I went to the doctor just days before I had planned to leave for my 60th birthday vacation with my husband. I was really looking forward to the trip for some time but realized at that moment that I had to refocus and make health my number one priority.”

You’ve got lots of obligations and responsibilities weighing on your mind right now—the kid’s schedules, vacations, work projects, a golf tournament—but all of them need to take a back burner to getting better. Sure you’ll be missed, but recognize that the only thing that will allow you to be there for those things in the future are the choices you make in this moment, today, to recapture your health by making your heart the number one priority. If you need to, call in that close circle of friends and family for reinforcement. Now is the time to get help!