Star Jones opens up to PEOPLE about her heart disease diagnosis in 2010 and undergoing a life-saving open-heart surgery
The ‘Divorce Court’ star says she’s transformed her heart health and dedicated her platform to raising awareness
In honor of Mother’s Day and Women’s Health Month, she’s encouraging women to have conversations with the women in their lives about heart health and the risk of heart disease
For many years, Star Jones was “severely overweight.” The Jones & Jury star, 63, worked with her doctors over 20 years ago in order to make some lifestyle changes to get control of her health.
“I changed my eating habits, I started to exercise regularly and my body changed and my mindset changed,” she tells PEOPLE. “So I was feeling really great.”
However, Jones says she was still experiencing “weird symptoms.” She would be short of breath, get lightheaded or dizzy when she stood up, and have “intense” heart palpitations. “It unnerved me. It made me know something was wrong,” she admits.
Jones decided to visit her cardiologist. After a series of tests, she was diagnosed with heart disease in 2010 and immediately told that she would need open-heart surgery.
“Anybody that says getting a diagnosis of heart disease doesn’t frighten them, is not telling the truth. I was scared,” she recalls. “The doctor said ‘We have to crack your chest and we will disconnect your heart and you’ll be on the heart and lung machine.’ So it made me face my mortality.”
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Maring Visuals/Star Jones
Star Jones GoRed headshot
Jones says the open-heart surgery “saved my life,” but remembers the terrifying procedure where he heart was “ disconnected for 22 minutes” on the operating table. After the health scare, she says she left the hospital a “heart-healthy person” who wasn’t going to take her health for granted anymore.
“Once I kind of took my head out of the sand, after two weeks of eyes-wide-open scared, I became Star Jones again,” she explains. “And I’m a voracious reader. I wanted to know everything about heart disease and I discovered that I had been living in a bubble, which I think a lot of women are.”
In the years since, Jones has been committed to using her platform to share the information she’s learned over the years, even being the national volunteer for the American Heart Association. The Divorce Court star tells PEOPLE that she wonders why women are comfortable discussing getting mammograms and breast exams for cancer but not as comfortable discussing checking for the signs and symptoms of heart disease.
“Open-heart surgery saved my life but me knowing more about my heart risk and focusing on my health is what gave me my life back,” she says.
Divorce Court/Star Jones
Star Jones’ Divorce Court headshot
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Jones — a self-proclaimed “heart disease survivor and thriver” — is now hoping to raise awareness in honor of Women’s Health Month. She notes that although heart disease is the leading cause of death in U.S. women, a new Medtronic survey reveals that only 45% of women have ever had a conversation about the subject with their mothers or grandmothers.
Additionally, 1 in 3 women have not talked to their doctor about heart health.
Ahead of Mother’s Day, Jones is partnering with Medtronic for their “Letter to My Mother” campaign to encourage women to kick start conversations with their mothers, or the women in their lives, about the importance of heart health and the risk of heart disease. For every pledge, the company will make a donation to a cause that advances women’s heart health.
“You can have these conversations with your family so that you can be well armed. I always say being well armed is ready for battle and we’re battling heart disease as a nation,” she says. “I’m leading this ‘Letter to My Mother’ campaign to really start the conversation with other women — the conversations that I wish I had earlier on and the conversations that quite frankly have saved my life.”
“Put it in your Mother’s Day card, kill two birds with one stone,” Jones quips.
Read the original article on People
