Cheryl Reisen wants women to take her story to heart. The 44-year-old Ashland mother of four never dreamed she would say the words “I am a woman with heart disease.”

Not at her age. Not with her good health. Not in her life.

“My biggest fear was breast cancer,” she said over a glass of iced tea. “But heart disease kills 10 times more women than breast cancer.”

In fact, one in five women develops heart disease.

And for every five women with heart disease only one will be diagnosed with it before it kills her.

Reisen is that one woman.

But she just as easily could have died without ever knowing what killed her.

And that’s why she travels throughout Nebraska sharing her story and spreading the word to women and the people who love them.

“Heart disease is not prejudiced. It doesn’t care about your sex, your age, your ethnicity. It’s an equal opportunity disease,” she said.

Reisin’s story begins in October 2004. She was 42.

She was working at church when she was struck by a burning pain in her chest.

“I chalked it up to indigestion,” she said. “I ignored it and got through the holidays. By February I thought, this indigestion is not going away.”

She saw her doctor, who agreed with Reisen’s self-diagnosis of indigestion.

By May she still had the indigestion and was also feeling exhausted. She was experiencing weird recurring pains in her elbows.

A second visit to the doctor revealed elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels, but nothing alarming.

“Even regular activities I had to take a nap before doing,” she recalled.

By the end of June she felt so lousy she told her husband Rod, “I don’t think I’ll still be here at Christmas.”

Two weeks later she was standing in the grocery store checkout line perusing a magazine when an snippet of an article caught her eye.

Many women with heart disease have an impending sense of doom.

“A lightbulb went off in my head,” Reisen said.

She returned to the doctor and asked for a referral to a cardiologist. The following day she had a cardiolyte test.

The results indicated “shadows,” and the doctor wanted to see her.

Reisen made the appointment and spent the weekend looking up “heart shadows” on the Internet.

She was frightened, yet reassured. Sometimes women have shadows cast by dense breast tissue. Was that her problem?

When she saw the doctor on July 14, even he didn’t seem very worried. He scheduled her for heart catheterization four weeks down the road.

Reisen demanded it sooner, citing four good reasons: Matt, Amy, Libby and Jake — her children.

At 5 a.m. the following morning she was at BryanLGH Medical Center East’s heart lab. Midway through the catheterization, the doctor said he was going to “put in a couple of stents.”

Not until after the procedure, when she saw the expression on her husband’s face, did she realize how serious it was.

One artery was 90 percent blocked, another 70 percent blocked. She had other lesser blockages that the doctor opted not to put stents in right away. Instead, she would try to reduce the blockages through diet, exercise and medication.

Her cardiologist commended her for being so tenacious: I don’t know if you would have made it until August without a heart attack.

She had been home from the hospital only a few days “when all of a sudden I felt like I had been horse-kicked in the chest,” Reisen recalled.

“I laid down on the floor. I took one nitroglycerin, then a second, then a third pill … my daughter asked if she should call Daddy. I said yes.”

She was taken by ambulance back to Lincoln, where doctors put stents in two arteries that were 50 percent blocked.

“I didn’t know how sick I was until I had all of my stents,” Reisen said.

“Everything changed,” she said. “The way I eat. The way I cook. I learned to read labels. I instill eating right and exercise in my children …

 “I use our treadmill now. We live four miles from Mahoney State Park and I never walked the trails. Now I am familiar with the trails there,” Reisen said.

“But I still need to learn how to handle my stress.”

She dispels the myths of healthy eating — bland food, tiny portions, no more good stuff. Yes, she counts calories and fat grams. Yes, she has to substitute ingredients and alter her favorite recipes. But it’s not hard. And the food is not bad.

What was hard was the emotional realization: I have heart disease.

She remembers asking her doctor: “Why did God let this happen to me?”

He rephrased the question and gave her a new perspective: Why did God let you live?

“I decided maybe I was the one to go out and try to make a change with women,” Reisen said. “You know the saying … when life gives you lemons … well, this is my lemonade.”

On July 16 she celebrated two years as a heart disease survivor. Around her neck dangle two heart charms, one for each year she has lived with heart disease.

“I have a lot of heart jewelry,” she said. “And I wear lots of red.”

In October she was one of 64 women across the U.S. selected to attend a special WomenHeart symposium. For four days these heart disease survivors were treated like queens and taught all sorts of heart healthy tricks for cooking, exercising, taking care of their families and taking care of themselves.

“The best part was I no longer felt like I was alone,” she said.

Now, Reisen and her fellow participants have the job of taking their lessons to women in their home states. She tells women not to overlook their concerns. Not to put themselves last. And to demand their doctors check things out.

“I was like other women — I’m not going to get heart disease, heart disease is for old people,” she recalled telling herself.

“Oh my gosh the world is ignorant — or uniformed.

“At my house we have a new saying: Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is deadly.”

Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com