Newpaper article about me and my lifestyle change
Hi everyone! I just wanted to share a recent article that was printed in our local newspaper. The American Heart Association also named me their 2007 Lifestyle Champion. Annual Collier ‘Heart Walk’ is Saturday
By LIZ FREEMAN 
Friday, November 16, 2007
Barbara Cabrera managed to get off the dance floor without blacking out.
“Don’t let me be the fat lady passing out on the dance floor,” she thought to herself one evening three years ago.
Her family doctor made her face reality. At the age of 39, she had suffered a “silent” heart attack.
“Something has got to change,” her doctor told her. “You are not going to be here in five years.”
She hit the scale at 350 pounds, she was diabetic, suffering from high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She was constantly tired but had developed sleep apnea.
“It was a vicious cycle, health-wise,” Cabrera, of Naples, said.
She took her battle one day at a time. More than 200 pounds lighter today and free of diabetes, she is inspiration for anyone grappling with heart disease and bad lifestyle choices.
The American Heart Association is honoring her as a “lifestyle champion” during Saturday’s annual Collier Start! Heart Walk in Cambier Park.
More than 3,500 people are expected to take part in the 5K walk beginning at 9 a.m. Last year 3,000 participated and raised $450,000, said Danielle Broderick, heart association spokeswoman in Southwest Florida. This year’s goal is $522,000.
People can still sign up the morning of the event; there is no cost but donations are welcome. Participants start arriving at 8 a.m.
Every year, 1.2 million Americans will have a heart attack and 700,000 others will suffer from a stroke, A leading factor is lack of physical activity.
Nowadays Cabrera, 42,who works in banking, doesn’t track how many miles she walks. But she proudly recalls a trip to New York to sightsee with friends in their 20s.
“It was one of my ‘wow’ moments,” she said. “I was with friends half my age and they were begging me to slow down.”
Her life is normal again. She tells others they, too, can have a second chance at life.
“Just look at it as making small lifestyle changes,” she said, suggesting a start with 15 minutes of walking daily or cutting out one fatty food. “Make small changes.”
The heart association’s national campaign for physical activity, Start!, calls on Americans and employers to create a culture of physical activity.
In addition to Saturday’s walk, the event will feature three communities, or villages, with the themes, “Create Hope,” “Inspire Change,” and “Celebrate Success.”
Cabrera’s lifestyle change reflects all three themes but it took her years of suffering to get there.
She was 20 years old and in labor in a Philadelphia hospital to deliver her son, Christopher. That’s when she got her first sign of what was to come.
“I remember going into labor,” she said. “And then they frightened me. They all (the medical personnel) started to get quiet. I drifted away. Two days later I woke up in the ICU.”
She had gone into cardiac arrest during the delivery and her son was born by an emergency Caesarean section.
Cabrera learned she had mitral valve prolapse, commonly called a heart murmur, a condition when the valve between the heart’s left upper chamber and the left lower chamber doesn’t close properly. In most cases, it is harmless and doesn’t require treatment, but in rare cir****tances it can cause cardiac arrest.
“They just kept me in observation because of the stress on the heart,” she said. “I was in the hospital one week.”
When she came home, her doctor told her to go about a normal life. Her normal life began to unravel four years later when she became a widow and faced raising her son on her own. She worked full time in banking and held a second job, and sometimes a third job, to make ends meet.
“You do what you have to do,” she said. “That’s when my eating habits took a nose dive. You eat on the run and eating on the run means fast food. In your 20s, you think you are invincible and can do it.”
Ignoring her health and a lack of exercise lead to the 200-pound weight gain by the time she was 39. That’s when she had the wake-up call on a nightclub dance floor when she nearly passed out.
She started to change her habits and enrolled in a pre-operative program to have gastric bypass surgery at Cleveland Clinic in Weston on Florida’s east coast. The pre-surgery program required extensive evaluations and seeing a nutritionist. She had the surgery in November, 2005.
Today she is stable at 140 pound and free of diabetes and high blood pressure.
“I’ve gotten a second chance in life,” she said.
Before: 348 (01/01/2005)
After: 165
Before: 348 (01/01/2005)
After: 165
