February 3, 2009

It wasn’t the flu
Quick action saved Masil Hulse from heart damage

By KATHY GRAY
of The Chronicle

     At first, it seemed like the flu.
     One day this past March, Masil Hulse was getting ready to go read at the SMART reading program when the symptoms came on suddenly.
     “I had to go to the bathroom real quick and threw up,” she recalls, “and I broke out in a cold sweat.”
     Lucky for her, she’d just read about these symptoms.
     “I thought, ‘I wonder if I’m having a heart attack?’”
     Hulse never thought she’d have to worry about that. She is a retired nurse and continuing artist who operated a holistic healing center for 24 years.
     Her work was all about being healthy and taking a realistic approach to life. She grew up on a farm in Dufur, where physical labor was part of every day.
     “I never had any inkling at all,” she said. “I thought I was the last person to have a heart attack. I’m always paying attention to my health and my living. But everybody has plaque in their veins.”
     But at 85 years old at the time, Hulse had one of the key risk factors for heart disease: She was older than 55.
     Rather than wait and wonder, as many people do, Hulse called 9-1-1.
     “I got help so quickly, I didn’t get any damage to my heart at all,” she said.
     The first thing the emergency medical technicians did was give her four baby aspirins. At Mid-Columbia Medical Center, doctors gave her a clot-busting medication.      Then she was transported to Portland, where they installed a couple of stents in her arteries.
     “I came home the next day,” she said.
     After her surgery, Hulse joined MCMC’s cardiac rehabilitation program.
     “It was just great,” she said. “It wasn’t anything new to me [as a retired nurse], but it was a wonderful review for me.”
     Hulse continues to follow healthy eating practices. She is awaiting a hip replacement, due to take place in March, which has prevented her from engaging in a regular exercise program. Even with a bad hip, Hulse does a lot of yard work, and walks the stairs at her home in The Dalles.
     “I still walk up and down them several times a day,” she said.
Many older people don’t get any exercise at all, she noted, something vital to heart health.
     “You always have to have a little bit of exercise,” she said.
That’s valuable advice at any age.