January 20, 2023 – Channing Muller was 26 years old when she had her first seizure. A vegetarian for ten years and an amateur runner, the seizure shocked each her and her doctors.
“The first time it happened was the morning after I went on a pub crawl,” says Muller, now 37. “I got out of bed and my heart was racing, my whole body was tingling and my face was completely pale.”
She tried to curve up into the fetal position and return to bed, but her heartbeat wouldn’t calm down.
“I could breathe, but I couldn’t regulate my breathing,” she recalls.
After calling her roommate for help, the 2 rushed to Georgetown Hospital in Washington, DC, five blocks from her apartment.
“They immediately hooked me up to an EKG machine and gave me aspirin,” says Muller, who now runs her own marketing firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “As my heart rate slowed, I realized my heart was beating over 200 beats per minute during my 45-minute heart attack.”
After further testing, she was flown by helicopter to the cardiology unit at Washington Hospital Center, also in Washington, DC, where she underwent much more tests. There, her doctors discovered a blockage within the left anterior descending artery (LAD), also often called the “widow maker” because this blockage stops all blood flow to the left side of the center.
“However, because of my age, I was sent home with drug therapy rather than a stent,” she says. “I was told to go to cardiac rehab and I would be monitored from there.”
A month later, she was back at work and feeling stressed when she felt severe tightness in her chest.
“I had nitroglycerin tablets with me, but after I took the second one, I knew I had to go to the hospital because my heart rate wasn't slowing down,” she says.
By the time she arrived on the hospital, she had already suffered an enormous heart attack. After doctors inserted a catheter into her heart, they found that the artery was 95% blocked.
At this point I had no alternative but to insert a stent and begin cardiac rehabilitation again.
For Müller, these two things modified his life in every way.
“Cardiac rehab was the best thing I could have done for myself because it taught me to trust that my body wouldn't let me down again,” she says. “It also helped my mental state. I was a runner, a vegetarian and a healthy weight, and yet this still happened to me. I had to deal with it, and cardiac rehab helped me.”
Thanks to her age and labor in rehab, the damage attributable to the center attack healed inside a yr.
“If you didn’t know that I live with it myself, you would never know that I have any problems,” she says.
Best of all, she returned to her training program and ran her first half marathon in 2019. In December 2021, she celebrated her ten-year anniversary of heart health by running her first marathon. Since then, she has run several more. It was not lost on her that she desired to run 26.2 miles and that she was 26 years old when she suffered her heart attack.
“I want people, especially women, to know that they need to advocate for themselves,” says Muller, who sits on the board of the American Heart Association and Go Red For Women. “Our biggest concern is we don't want to make a fuss or think it's a panic attack or we're stressed. Make a fuss.”
She also urges us all to know the difference between a panic attack and a heart attack.
“It feels very similar for women,” she says. “The difference is that when you're having a panic attack, if you focus on a spot on the wall and take a deep breath, you're able to do that and your heart rate slows down. A heart attack doesn't stop. You can't focus your way out of it. It has to run its course.”
Today, Müller visits her cardiologist annually and takes 4 cholesterol-lowering drugs, a baby aspirin tablet and blood pressure medication on daily basis.
Müller says her heart attacks have modified her without end.
“I firmly believe that we are a product of our experiences and the way we deal with them,” she says. “It was the worst experience, but I managed to get through it and learned to live more in harmony with my body.”
It also led her to dedicate her life to physical challenges.
“Who knows if I would be paying so much attention to my marathons if I hadn't already proven that I could get through something so scary,” she says. “I had to become a much stronger person, and here I am!”