Chip Chick
When you think about being a teenager, what are the things that come to mind? For me, it’s starting high school. Starting to express myself more, going to my first dance and going to sporting events with friends.
For me personally, it was getting my braces taken off and getting contact lenses for my eyes. It was like I was starting with a blank slate for high school. I don’t think about the possibility of having a heart attack.
That’s exactly what happened to one girl when she was 14. Ceirra Moss survived a heart attack at that age, and the night before, she had gone to a school dance and had a great time; the next morning, she struggled to get dressed.
Once she realized she couldn’t put a shirt on, she tried to get to her parents’ bedroom for help. She made it halfway down the hallway and blacked out, she came to about a minute later.
“I realized I had blacked out,” she said. “At that point, I had a really hard time breathing, and it almost felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. My mom was able to hear my small whisper of ‘mom’ … and she could hear me all the way downstairs across the house.”
Her dad is a pharmacist, and he noticed instantly that the color of her face was turning green. He knew then it was a dire emergency, and he was able to get her to the hospital in record time.
“Something didn’t feel right… and I had pain that was going from my elbow to my shoulder,” Ceirra shared.
“And if you’ve ever looked up symptoms of women with heart attacks, that’s one of the main symptoms.”
The original doctor that diagnosed her told them that she had teenage anxiety and was about to send her home. He then sent her to a children’s hospital. Hours of testing later, she was going into emergency surgery.
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