Heart disease refers to several types of heart conditions. The most common type of heart disease in the United States is coronary artery disease (CAD), which affects the blood flow to the heart. Decreased blood flow can cause a heart attack. (source)
In season fourteen of Grey’s Anatomy, Miranda Bailey walked into Seattle Presbyterian Hospital believing she was having a heart attack. Her first EKG showed nothing, but she insisted on more testing. The doctor ignored her requests and instead sent a psychiatrist to talk to her, believing her symptoms were mental. When Bailey collapsed after doing CPR on another patient, they finally concluded she was having a heart attack and Maggie came over from Grey Sloan to do a keyhole CABG on her. As a result of this health scare, Bailey changed her lifestyle, improving her diet, increasing her daily exercise, and even taking a sabbatical from her job as chief of surgery. A few years later, Bailey and her husband Ben were in a custody battle over Pruitt Miller against her biological grandparents, Ifeya and Bill Miller. This ended when Ifeya revealed that she’d had a heart attack and they were still adjusting the settings on her pacemaker, meaning she didn’t have the stamina required to keep up with an active toddler. Bailey shared that she understood being in that position.
A story with a less cheerful ending comes from Private Practice’s Pete Wilder. In the season four finale, Pete had a heart attack while home alone with his then-toddler son, Lucas. Luckily, Cooper found him and took him to the hospital, where bypass surgery saved his life. Like Bailey, he changed his lifestyle in order to stave off disease, but unfortunately, he suffered a second heart attack, off-screen, at the start of season six, which killed him (Behind the scenes, the show had some budget cuts, which required them to cut one of the main characters.). (source)
We don’t want to bring a downer to what’s supposed to be a celebratory month, but do feel it’s important to acknowledge the progress that has been made and is still being made. Pete’s story took place in 2011-2012, while Bailey’s started in 2018 and the contrast between them really shows the difference that even such a short time (in the long scheme of things) can make a difference in people’s quality of life and longevity.