Stephanie Dempsey

This week Stephanie Dempsey shared reasons why even young women should find out if they are at risk for heart disease.

One of the young Gaston woman’s rationales is that many predictors are silent. “The first clue I had was the very early death of my sister. She was only 28. I had just been in her wedding, and she and her husband were moving into their dream home. As the carpet installers were coming in, my sister’s body was being carried out.”

You can believe Dempsey was quick to make an appointment to have her own heart checked after the shock of losing her sister at such a young age. “Our mother had had heart problems but not nearly that young,” recalled Dempsey, a stay–at– home mom.

The first tests found nothing abnormal, but fortunately Dempsey kept asking questions. In time she was diagnosed with the hereditary disease hyperlipidemia. She is missing the gene that tells her liver to stop producing cholesterol. The rarity of the disease made it difficult to catch. The results of hyperlipidemia on her arteries, though, were unmistakable.

A day after Dempsey was examined at the Medical University of SC, she underwent a quadruple by–pass. She has since had numerous other treatments, and now stabilized, has her cholesterol checked quarterly.

Meanwhile, the genetic disposition for hyperlipidemia has been passed down to her young niece, daughter of Dempsey’s late sister. “She is only 14 years old, and she has already had to be placed on statin drugs.”

It has been a cruel twist that heart disease, still wrongly considered a man’s problem by many, is being handed down from woman to woman in Dempsey’s family. As a Red Dress Advocate, Dempsey tells everyone she can that heart disease kills more women each year than all forms of cancer combined.

Fortunately, Dempsey has not passed hyperlipidemia to her son. Jake, a sixth grader at Pineridge Middle School, has been this advocate’s advocate. “Because he is so intelligent, my husband and I have been able to talk with him about what all has gone on with me,” Dempsey said.

In one of her proudest maternal moments, Dempsey recalled Jake creating his own analogy to comprehend what his mother’s heart surgery had involved. “After the doctor explained, Jake said, ‘Like a beaver dammed up the river and you had to make new rivers so the blood could get through.’ The doctor said it was the best analogy he had ever heard.”

Dempsey’s husband Jason and his parents who live close by, as well as her parents in Jacksonville, FL, continue to be supportive in a variety of ways. “One of the things I emphasize is that the effect of heart disease trickles down to the entire family,” she said.

Dempsey said she willingly shares her story so that other young women will begin to understand that heart disease is not exclusively a man’s disease or an older person's problem.

Dempsey was pictured on Red Dress Day with other Providence Red Dress Ambassadors who have joined the campaign to alert SC women of the threat of heart disease. For more information go to www.RedDressCampaign.

com or call 256-5460.