The Sopranos star Aida Turturro has recalled a heart attack she mistook for prolonged chest pains.
During a Tuesday, June 2, appearance on Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Christina Applegate’s “MeSsy” podcast, Turturro, 63, detailed her near-death experience that led to an emergency quadruple bypass surgery.
“I was having chest pains for a while, but a hiatal hernia can imitate it [a heart attack],” she said. “My friend’s like, ‘Should we call the ambulance?’ and I’m like, ‘Nah, I’m fine.’ I get in my car, I walk to my house … my cousin gave me his doctor’s number, his doctor answered and he’s like … ‘It sounds like you might need to go to a cardiologist.’ I go to the doctor, [an] amazing doctor, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you had a heart attack.’”
Turturro, who played Janice Soprano, the aunt of Sigler’s Meadow Soprano on the HBO drama series, was then told that “88 to 90 per cent” of her arteries were clogged before she was “rushed to emergency” where she underwent heart surgery.
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“I could’ve died, I should’ve died then, but I didn’t,” the actress concluded. She also explained that she had thought that she was suffering from a hiatal hernia, which Mayo Clinic describes as when “the upper part of the stomach bulges through the large muscle [diaphragm] that separates the abdomen and the chest,” because she suffered from diabetes.
“I was lucky it wasn’t my time … diabetes is the number one cause of heart disease,” she said.
Turturro added that as a result of the surprise emergency, she’s since become more aware of taking care of oneself. “I’m blessed with beautiful people in my life. It’s all in your brain. I learned my lessons, you have to take care of yourself,” she said on the podcast. “We can always do better but it’s really about, don’t do nothing. You can’t help your kids, you can’t help your family if you don’t do you. Get everybody involved [because] this is a priority. This is our life, we’re doing this together.”
Celebrity Health Scares Through the Years
Earlier this year, Drew Carey spoke out about ignoring heart attack symptoms of his own in 2001. “I was really overweight, and we were supposed to come back to start taping [The Drew Carey Show] … we were going to start taping so I [wanted] to lose some weight. So I thought I was going to start jogging,” the comedian, 67, said during the March 4 episode of Ted Danson’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast. “I had a little heart monitor, and I was jogging down my street, and my heart rate went up to … something really crazy, and I was like, ‘Oh.’ And I felt numb in my shoulder [and] all the things that I read were heart attack symptoms.”
After experiencing further symptoms on set the following day, Carey was hospitalized before undergoing a coronary angioplasty.
Since his experience, through prioritizing a healthier lifestyle, Carey has lost 80 pounds through diet and exercise.
