By Judith Roberts
Heart disease hit home for Ruston resident Tori Brister five years ago, and since that life-changing event, she has worked with medical experts to help bring awareness to others.
February is Heart Disease Awareness Month, and Brister, a travel agent, is working in collaboration with the board of directors for Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) Research, Inc., to create an annual educational event.
“(We want to form) a sense of community among SCAD survivors and fundraising for SCAD Research,” Brister said. “The details are still in the works. This is an opportunity for me to marry my path as a SCAD survivor with my experience working in the travel industry.”
Brister, who was 34 when she had her heart attack, said she wanted to learn as much as she could about SCAD to help prevent recurrence for herself and to help others see the signs and symptoms.
“When I had my SCAD in 2019, I visited the Mayo Clinic to learn as much as I could about it,” Brister said. “The research doctor that I met with told me that SCAD research was still in its early stages; they’d only been researching it for about 10 years. The diagnosis is rare because many healthcare professionals are still unaware of it. There are many unanswered questions about SCAD — why it happens, who is at risk for it, how to prevent it and even how to treat it. We need more research, and more research will only come with more awareness, education and fundraising.
“Many folks don’t survive SCAD. Those of us who have survived need ‘be loud’ to further the research, to raise the funds necessary to further the research, and to make more physicians aware of SCAD and its symptoms so correct diagnoses are made/recorded. We are at a 20% chance of recurrence. We want to see progress in getting answers to unanswered questions.”
Brister said her own experience did not mirror stereotypical heart attacks. She did not meet any of the typical heart attack patient criteria.
“On Feb. 23, 2019, I had a series of unusual symptoms while sitting at a LA Tech baseball game,” she said. “I felt a pinch in my back; tingling, like a nerve was pinched or a muscle was knotting up. I tried to stretch and put pressure on that area with the hard seat back of the chair. Within a few minutes, I began to feel generally unwell — nauseated, cold sweats, weak and my limbs were slowly going numb. My friends noticed that I was losing color and helped me lie down on the floor in front of my seat. They called 911 when they couldn’t find my pulse. I never lost consciousness and I never had pain in my chest. An ambulance took me to the local hospital where an abnormal EKG reading was collected a few times in a row. I was told I was having a heart attack and was asked repeatedly if there was a history of heart disease in my family, if this had ever happened before and if I had ever had heart trouble. The answer was no to all of these questions.”
Brister was then airlifted to Monroe’s Glenwood Hospital and was taken to the cath lab to investigate what was happening.
“As the doctor inserted the cath into my arteries, the tip of the cath caught a tear in my artery and tore it further, in a spiral down the length of my RCA (right coronary artery),” Brister said. “That’s when he knew my diagnosis, Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection. It was something he’d learned about in medical school, 20 years before, but had never seen it in practice. He placed two stents in that artery before removing the cath. Before I left the ICU, my husband had secured me an appointment at Mayo in Minnesota, with one of the top SCAD research doctors in the world.”
At Mayo, Brister said she had the gamut of tests run, including imaging, labs and an appointment with a genetic specialist.
“All things considered, I was doing very well and was not diagnosed with any other conditions commonly associated with SCAD patients,” she said. “I enrolled in cardiac rehab to help me recover and learn to trust my body.”
However, the cardiac rehab didn’t last long because two weeks later, Brister discovered she was pregnant.
“At that time, pregnancy carried a 50% chance of death, something I was reminded of at almost every appointment for the next year,” she said. “My pregnancy was uneventful, and we got a healthy baby girl to complete our family.”
In the first few years after her SCAD, Brister said she experienced a roller coaster of emotions.
“Trauma and fear ruled my mind,” she said. “After finally getting to a place of acceptance, I am ready to find my place in the world of SCAD awareness, learning to trust my body and fundraising for more research.”
Now, in working with SCAD Research, Inc., Brister hopes more individuals will recognize heart attacks can be of varying symptoms and that more research and awareness will be done.
“More people need to be aware that heart attack symptoms don’t look the same for everyone,” she said. “Chest pain and arm pain don’t accompany every heart attack. Never in a million years did I think I was having a heart attack. I was lucky to be around friends who were hypervigilant enough to check my pulse and act fast. If you are having unusual symptoms, get checked out.”
