Mermaid Beach mother Nicole Walda has a serious health warning for middle-aged Gold Coast women
A Gold Coast woman in her 50s thought her chest pains were from a coughing fit, but she was actually having a heart attack - at the Gold Coast University University
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HEART attack survivor Nicole Walda is warning middle-aged women to listen to their bodies after she wrongly attributed terrible pain and sweats to a coughing fit she had after a curry she ate at work.
Coincidentally, the 51-year-old works in the cardiac catheter suite at Gold Coast University Hospital, arguably the best place in the world to have a life-threatening incident.
“Had I been at home I probably would have dismissed the symptoms as just being perhaps a strained muscle from all the coughing,” said the Mermaid Waters local.
“The scary thing is, I probably wouldn’t have called an ambulance and perhaps had a lie down and not woken up again.”
After lunch, and trying to ignore the heavy pain radiating down the middle of her chest, she headed back to the ward to continue her shift.
“I started becoming quite clammy and warm but at that stage I was still thinking it was from the curry I’d been eating,” she said.
“At that point the nurses came in to have their lunch and they immediately recognised I wasn’t looking good. I told them I was fine and heading back to work after a small sit down.
“But I started feeling pretty unwell and felt really sick all over. The pain was starting to radiate under my ribcage and down my arm. That’s when the girls said ‘that’s it, you’re going for an ECG’.”
While an initial ECG on the ward didn’t show any signs of a heart attack, her pain raised the suspicions of the team, and the catheter lab nurse unit manager Vanessa Beattie sent Ms Walda to the emergency department (ED) for further testing.
“The team here are amazing and we have a number of years between us in the specialty of cardiology,” said Ms Beattie.
“I think we recognise the symptoms relatively quickly if something’s not quite right and needs further investigation.”
Ms Walda said by the time she got to ED it felt like “an elephant was sitting on my chest. I was very short of breath and I became quite limp”.
Cardiac catheter suite director Dr Ravie Batra said what started out as any other day became quite extraordinary for the cath lab family.
“At round 7pm I got a phone call from our advanced trainee and we immediately activated the cath lab, which is a 24/7 service we provide for patients having a heart attack,” Dr Batra said.
“We did an angiogram which showed one of Nicole’s arteries was blocked and we confirmed one area of her heart was not moving because of the blocked artery.
“Fortunately for Nicole the clot had dislodged so she didn’t require any stenting.”
While there is history of heart disease on her father’s side, Ms Walda said doctors believed stress cause was a contributing factor to her heart attack.
Ms Walda wants her ordeal to act as a warning for other women who are active, healthy and have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
“I’m not an old woman but I’m not a young woman either. If you are having any signs of heart attack like chest pain, clamminess, pain in the arm or jaw, please do seek medical attention.”
DOCTOR FEARS SPIKE IN COAST CANCER RATE - October 28
HEALTH authorities are concerned at a steep drop in breast screening rates on the Gold Coast, with only 50 per cent of eligible women regularly having the lifesaving test.
Clinical director of BreastScreen Gold Coast, Dr Ellen Dooris, said while COVID-19 had led to cancellations and a steep drop off in tests earlier in the year, the number of women getting screened had already slowly declined in recent years.
“Currently on the Gold Coast we’re only screening about 50-55 per cent of eligible women,” she said.
“So that’s about 45-50 per cent of women who aren’t regularly screening.
“Often breast cancers we find as part of the screening program are tiny. They are small breast cancers, that’s what we are in the business of trying to find, small breast cancers before you can feel or notice any change.
“The vast majority of women we detect breast cancers in are unaware that they have a problem until their screening.”
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In 2019, BreastScreen Queensland Gold Coast Service screened a record 33,647 women, with almost two-thirds of breast cancers detected through the service were small cancers.
From January to September this year, 21,428 women have been screened at the local service.
With no symptoms, it was an unrelated visit to her GP and a chance sighting of a BreastScreen sign that led to an early breast cancer diagnosis for Janine Oxley.
“Because I was turning 50 the GP said let’s do a full check-up,” said the mother of three, who is a nurse for Gold Coast Health.
“I thought, I’ll pop online and see if I can find one of the BreastScreen vans because I live on Mt Tamborine and don’t have access to clinics there.
“I had the mammogram and I received a call back to say I needed some further investigation. I had the biopsy done and came back in a week to get the results.
“I thought, no it won’t happen to me, it can’t happen to me, I have no symptoms. When I walked in, I started to get a little scared and then was given the diagnosis.
“It was cancer.”
Mrs Oxley had a lumpectomy to remove a tumour and then radiation treatment at Robina Hospital, where she works in the acute medical unit.
During her treatment she continued to care for patients, including women with the same diagnosis as her.
Mrs Oxley, who’s in remission, hopes her story will motivate others to have a breastscreen.
Since its inception in 1991, the BreastScreen Queensland Gold Coast Service has provided more than 709,000 breast screens for women and diagnosed more than 3500 invasive breast cancers, as of 13 October this year.
Free breast screening is available for women aged 40 and over without signs or symptoms of breast cancer. Women aged between 50 and 74 years are recommended to have a breast screen every two years as the evidence of screening benefit is strongest for women of this age.
BreastScreen Queensland has clinics at Helensvale, Southport and West Burleigh and mobile screening vans at various Gold Coast locations.
To book a free appointment, for women aged 40 and over, call 13 20 50 or visit breastscreen.qld.gov.au.
WOMEN GETS TATTOO TO RAISE MONEY FOR BREAST CANCER RESEARCH
IN memory to her sister, Simone VZ has tattooed her arm and raise funds for the cause close to her heart.
Celebrity Ink is offering people the opportunity to donate to the National Breast Cancer Foundation while getting inked with 100 per cent of the profits from $80 flash tattoos going to the cause in October to recognise National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
With all four Gold Coast chains offering the deal, the Southport resident went to the Surfers Paradise parlour for her tattoo.
“Seven years ago I lost my sister to cancer,” the 25-year-old said.
“My family wasn’t aware of it until quite far along. She was carrying at the time, so she made the decision to carry through with the pregnancy instead of getting help for cancer treatment.
“Raising awareness and getting the message to people to get screened earlier is really important to me.
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“It wasn’t until I saw the flash that I thought it’d be a cool idea to get a tattoo for her. When I knew where the money would be going, I jumped at the idea.”
Her artist Laddawan Cohen said it’s special to share something that is very significant to someone.
“Whether you’re a survivor or there’s someone you want to remember, now is the perfect time to get something to represent that,” she said.
“Not only are you doing something important to yourself but you’re also helping lots of people in the community.”
With nine women in every 100 diagnosed with breast cancer not surviving past five years, every dollar to the National Breast Cancer Foundation will help fund prevention, detection, and treatment research to save lives.
The National Breast Cancer Foundation’s Director of Research Investment Dr Christopher Pettigrew said the partnership with Celebrity Ink was fitting for the foundation.
“The breast cancer journey is a very individual and personal experience, just like every tattoo is unique and has its own story,’ he said.
“Tattoos play a very special role in helping many of those diagnosed with cancer to find hope, resilience, courage, peace and strength.”
In June breast cancer survivor Becca White joined a nationwide push to get screening services to promote free mammograms to women in their 40s, something she didn’t know existed.
“I had no idea that BreastScreen Queensland offered free screening to women in their 40s,” she said. “I was only diagnosed after months of pain and I sought advice from my GP and paid to have an ultrasound and mammogram.
“Women in their 40s should not put off their health checks because they’re too busy.”
At 45 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and opted to have a double mastectomy followed by radiography and chemotherapy. Further genetic testing revealed she had the CDH1 gene and a 70 per cent chance of developing stomach cancer. This year she'll have her stomach removed.
“I chose the sledgehammer approach. After what happened to my mother (also diagnosed at 45 and died at 64 after it spread to her leg) I was tired of worrying about breast cancer.”
Ms White has joined forces with Can at 40, Do at 45, a campaign spreadheaded by Jodi Joyce, who survived the insidious disease in 2018.
“We want the government to invest in saving the lives of women by promoting free mammograms from 40-50 – we just can’t have women dying from metastatic breast cancer,” she said.
“So many women I’ve known have gone for their first mammogram in their 40s and a breast cancer has been found.”
She said the invitation age at 50 was outdated, with countries such as New Zealand, US, Sweden, Czech Republic and Italy inviting or promoting women to have mammograms from 45.
“Some GPs advocate for it and tell their patients, some do the complete opposite and others are not even aware that mammography is free from 40, terrible,” she said.
Ashmore woman Julie Fels was diagnosed with cancer 16 days shy of her 42nd birthday and said she knew a lot of women who did not realise mammograms were free from 40.
“Women in their 30s to 40s are just at a great risk of getting it. I have no family history, it came totally out of left field and I was very lucky to have found my tumour at the time that I did,” she said.
A Queensland Health spokesperson said the cancer detection rate in women aged between 50 and 74 years was 59 per 10,000 women screened, compared with 33 per 10,000 women screened aged between 40 and 49 years.
“In 2019, 137 women aged between 40-49 years were diagnosed with breast cancer, compared with 1174 women aged between 50 and 74 years in the same year. This reflects that older women are at greater risk of breast cancer,” they said.
It recommends women in their 40s and 75 and over talk to their GP “about whether breast screening is right for them”.
Visit breastscreen.qld.gov.au or call 13 20 50 to find your nearest screening centre.
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