Virgie Harris-Bovelle, 70, lives with an implanted defibrillator - a device that automatically shocks her heart out of an irregular rhythm. She never knows when the device will fire, and when it does, she knows that it may have just saved her life. The diagnosis that resulted in the defibrillator changed Harris-Bovelle’s life, but not in the ways you might expect. For her, learning that she has heart disease has opened doors and ushered her into a personal era she calls the “best years” of her life.

Harris-Bovelle is a Washington, D.C., psychotherapist who continues to work full-time at her practice. But now she also squeezes in advocacy work, such as speeches, media interviews, and video presentations. Her experience with heart disease has taught her a few things about the workings of not only her own cardiovascular system, but also her life and spirit. And now she wants to share those things with other women.

“Sometimes I think this happened to me for a reason,” she said. “Talking about my situation gives me a certain kind of energy. I feel very vibrant.”

A long road to a diagnosis

There was a time when Harris-Bovelle would not have used the word “vibrant” to describe how she felt. She was diagnosed with hypertension in the late 1970s, after nearly fainting while waiting in line at a bank. Her doctors prescribed medication, and she returned to life as normal, thinking that would be the end of it. Then, a few years later, she felt a severe pain in her chest and down her arm.

She went for lab tests and assumed she would be told if the tests uncovered something she needed to know. No one from her doctor’s office ever called her with results or discussed her symptoms with her any further, and she went back to her regular routine. One year later, she had a heart attack.

Six months after her heart attack, Harris-Bovelle underwent angioplasty, a procedure to increase the flow of blood to her heart. She then began therapy to cope with an unhealthy marriage and relieve what she had come to see as a dangerous level of stress in her life. She and her husband eventually divorced and she felt that her health was finally improving. She was wrong.

Despite treatment and the positive changes she had made, Harris-Bovelle’s health issues returned. She began to have serious and frightening symptoms, such as severe pain, difficulty breathing, dizzy spells, and frequent coughing.

Regardless of her insistence that something was very wrong, both her primary care physician and her cardiologist continued to dismiss her concerns. Again she was inclined to accept their answers and cope with her pain and discomfort as best she could. But this time, her daughter stepped in.

“She is not the type of person you say no to,” Harris-Bovelle said of her daughter. A physician herself, she was fed up with her mother’s treatment. She enlisted the help of a new team of doctors, who diagnosed her mother with congestive heart failure and arrhythmia, and recommended the defibrillator.

“Now I have a sense of me”

While Harris-Bovelle has finally found appropriate treatment, the defibrillator has presented its own set of challenges. The shock is powerful enough to jolt her off her feet, and it is sometimes preceded by dizziness and blurred vision.

"People know I have it,” she said. “I tell them, ‘If it goes off, call 911 for me and I’ll be ok.’ It’s amazing how well they take it."

Talking about her defibrillator also gives her another way to help the people she works with. "It allows me to talk to my clients about taking care of themselves,” she said.

With the realization that standing up for herself may have saved her life, Harris-Bovelle is eager to encourage others who may be in similar situations. For anyone who feels their doctors are not taking them seriously, Harris-Bovelle has two words of advice: "Move on."

"There are many doctors who will listen. I know because they’re in my life now," she said.

One of those new doctors in her life also helped nudge Harris-Bovelle in a new direction. Her cardiologist encouraged her to become involved with the American Heart Association. She initially felt intimidated by the idea of speaking publicly about her disease, but stepped out of her comfort zone with the support and encouragement of the people around her. It turned out to be a liberating experience.

“I do have a sense of freedom I never had before,” she said. “I was always a good mother and wife. Now I have a sense of me.”

“Heart disease does not have to be the end of your life”

As more people heard her story, other organizations asked her to work with them to get the word out about heart disease. A heart disease awareness campaign by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, recently featured a poster of real women with heart disease wearing red dresses. Harris-Bovelle was among those women.

Jo Parrish, vice president for institutional advancement at the Society for Women’s Health Research, says that Harris-Bovelle is gracious and well-spoken when telling her story, which is sadly typical.

“Hers is a classic case of the health care community not recognizing heart disease in women. Women are often reluctant to say, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ and then they are not as aggressively treated. The mind set is to treat women’s symptoms as something more minor,” she said.

While heart disease has been anything but minor to Virgie Harris-Bovelle, it has turned out to be something that she can live with.

"Heart disease does not have to be the end of your life,” Harris-Bovelle said. “You can have a lot of years ahead of you."