Heart attack signs: Teen thought she felt ‘butterflies’ from school dance; it was heart attack

Back when she was just 14, Ceirra Zeager, from Pennsylvania, US, thought her pounding heart was a sign of the excitement from attending her first school dance with a boy.

However, it turned out to be a heart attack, caused by a congenital heart defect.

Now 23, Zeager is sharing her story to raise awareness about heart attack signs, as a volunteer for the American Heart Association.

After she got back home from the dance, Zeager continued to experience a racing heart. “I was thinking, ‘Is this how it is to have feelings?'” Zeager told Insider.

The next morning, Zeager’s “butterflies” had morphed into a deep fatigue and heaviness in her arm. Her vision narrowed, her ear flooded with warmth, and she collapsed.

“Before I knew it, I was on the floor,” Zeager said. “It felt like an elephant was on my chest.”

Still, the doctor recommended her to visit a children’s hospital for a safer side. There she got some tests done that identified a blockage in or around her heart. She underwent a cardiac catheterization procedure to identify the location of the clot.

When Zeager awoke from the surgery, she saw her sister crying. “You had a heart attack,” her sister said.

Later, tests also revealed that Zeager had elevated lipoprotein A. This means her red blood cells are “extra sticky,” which lead to a blood clot. She was also born with a hole in her heart, called patent foramen ovale (PFO). The hole allowed the clot to get lodged in her coronary artery, leading to the heart attack.

Read more: Never ignore these early symptoms of oral cancer

Zeager’s treatment included surgery to repair the hole, six months on blood thinners, and a several-week long hospital stay.

About seven years later, Zeager experienced extreme fatigue. A cardiologist told her she needed an open-heart surgery to repair a leaky heart valve that had been damaged during the heart attack.

Zeager underwent the surgery in February 2021. Still, her ejection fraction — a measure of heart strength — is around 44%. A healthy range is 50% to 70%, according to the Cleveland Clinic.