\u201cHe didn\u2019t say anything about pain in his chest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thinking nothing of it, the couple went to bed that night.<\/p>\n
About 2am, she woke to her husband making strange noises, something he occasionally did. But when the noises didn\u2019t stop, she quickly realised he was having a heart attack.<\/p>\n
She got him onto the floor and began performing CPR while her children called out to see if everything was okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to scare them. I just said that Dad was feeling a bit sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
She called a doctor, who arrived and immediately told her to call an ambulance. By the time it arrived, he had died, aged just 38.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have called the ambulance first, but I didn\u2019t think it through,\u201d she said. \u201cYou should always call 111.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had no reason to expect he would be suffering from a cardiac arrest. But the experience helped her to recognise the symptoms when another loved one suffered a heart attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was only 32 when my first husband died, so after a few years, I remarried to my current husband,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, he was experiencing stomach pains, so she offered him some paracetamol, but he didn\u2019t want any.<\/p>\n
He went to bed but later awoke still in pain, so Hansen decided they needed to go to hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cHalfway there, I just thought I hope he\u2019s not having a heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he was. He was flown urgently to Wellington Hospital to receive an angiogram and angioplasty, from which he recovered well.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Hansen was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to get an erratic heartbeat but didn\u2019t think much of it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I started to take up tramping with a group that everything came to a head.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had joked that one day she was going to end up with a pacemaker, then on one tramp her symptoms intensified.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt awful, then I vomited, and it all went to custard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conscious of her risk, she now exercises closer to home and keeps track of her heart rate on her smartwatch, which also lets her husband track her, just in case.<\/p>\n
She is sharing her story as part of the Heart Foundation\u2019s Big Heart Appeal, which will see volunteers collecting nationwide today and tomorrow to fund life-saving heart research and support for people living with heart disease.<\/p>\n
She hopes her story could one day help save lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cTalking about what has happened to me can help educate people.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially those who don\u2019t know the signs. I didn\u2019t know the signs when it came to my first husband\u2019s cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funds raised also help support education for New Zealand heart professionals and improve treatment for those living with heart disease. It\u2019s an important cause that\u2019s close to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe didn\u2019t say anything about pain in his chest.\u201d Thinking nothing of it, the couple went to bed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[89,1408,63871,7191,93550,134,2862,72919,31869,424,130,3025,3607,111,139,69,2515,180,131,25824,61,1955,1354],"class_list":{"0":"post-308708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-attack","9":"tag-awareness","10":"tag-christina","11":"tag-disease","12":"tag-hansens","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-heart","15":"tag-heartbreak","16":"tag-impacted","17":"tag-life","18":"tag-more","19":"tag-most","20":"tag-napier","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-raise","25":"tag-shares","26":"tag-than","27":"tag-throughout","28":"tag-to","29":"tag-ways","30":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}