Local woman eyed for national heart disease campaign | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

The Edgewater woman often complained of such bouts as a teenager, but doctors always dismissed her. In her 20s, Mrs. Meerman was finally diagnosed with arrhythmia, which is a change in the heartbeat.

And now she has become an advocate to help people get help sooner than she did.

When a woman goes to the doctor and says her heart is racing "the doctor will typically say, 'you need to relax,' " said Mrs. Meerman, 43. "We need to give women the support to say 'You need to check on this.' (Women) go and go and go. We're programmed and wired differently than men."

In July, the former Mrs. Maryland competed for the Mrs. International title, with a heart-health awareness platform. By October, she and her team of friends hope to raise $5,000 through the American Heart Association's Start! Heart Walk in Baltimore.

And WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease is considering using her as a spokeswoman.

Each year, WomenHeart recruits about 60 women to serve as representatives and share their stories about dealing with heart disease. The women who are selected go on to leadership training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

The selected participants will serve as spokesmen for the organization and share their stories with the media and the public. Mrs. Meerman is among those being considered. Decisions will be made in August.

Cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke and heart attack, are the top killers of women, surpassing even cancer. Currently, 8 million women between the ages of 45 and 65 are living with heart disease, according to WomenHeart.

Each year 500,000 women are killed through heart attacks and strokes, but another 430,000 women have nonfatal heart attacks annually, the group said.

The symptoms to heart attacks differ between the sexes. Men may have chest pain and pressure, while women could experience other unexplainable pains, such as aches in the joints of their arms and legs or in their jaw, officials said.

Based in Washington, D.C., WomenHeart is a patient-advocacy group aimed at getting the word out about the dangers of heart disease for women.

Three women with a history of heart attacks launched the organization in 2000. Now it offers a series of initiatives from providing heart health information to support groups to conducting public-policy research. It has 16,000 members and 50 support groups around the country.

"A lot of women who come through the program may have felt alone or isolated before going to the Mayo Clinic," said Judy Lubin, WomenHeart's director of communications and partnership. "A lot say that they left the symposium feeling a renewed sense of purpose and mission. It's not unusual for women to say, going in, they'd been feeling like a victim (and) left feeling like an advocate with a strong sense of purpose."

Mrs. Meerman remembered having trouble with her heart since she was 18, but was never properly diagnosed. But at age 28, she was home with her children when her heartbeat went down to 30 beats per minute and she had trouble breathing.

She was taken to the hospital by an ambulance and was later diagnosed with her heart problems.

Because of her condition, Mrs. Meerman takes medication and stays away from caffeine and alcohol. Despite her precautions, she still has occasional problems with her irregular heartbeat.

"It took 10 years of me living with it and almost dying, to get attention," Mrs. Meerman said. "I live very healthy now. I try to be as stress free as I can. (The disease) can kick in no matter what you're doing. There's no rhyme or reason to it."