Slender, active and young, Scheline Crutchfield doesn't seem like she'd have problems with her ticker

“I was born with a heart condition called aortic stenosis, and it’s basically a deformed aortic valve.” Scheline Crutchfield is a tall, slender woman with perfectly straight hair and a happy, deep gaze. She frankly recounts her lifetime of heart disease. 

“They didn’t know it when I was born, and I had heart failure when I was six weeks old,” she says, sipping tea. “That’s how they found it.”

Crutchfield, now 46, had the first of two open-heart surgeries when she was 16. Aortic stenosis, her condition, is an abnormal narrowing of the aortic valve that causes a restriction in blood flow. In 1981, the doctors were able to repair the deformed valve, but cautioned her that the repair would likely last only between 15 and 20 years. After that, she would have to have another surgery. 

“It’s a type of thing that I knew my whole life I had it and then I knew from 16 on that I was going to face another surgery,” she says. 

The repaired valve actually lasted well into its 28th year. By that time, however, Crutchfield began hoping it would last forever. Last summer, Crutchfield’s cardiologist at UVA, Dr. George Beller, found  that in addition to having to replace the valve, Crutchfield had an aneurism in her ascending aorta. “There was no choice but to have open-heart surgery,” she says. 

How do you prepare for such a procedure? 

With composure. And, in her case, it helped to have gone through the experience once before.  

“Knowing what to expect is very helpful,” she says. “I went on the Internet and got a book called A Patient’s Guide to Valve Replacement Surgery, written by a patient, and it’s because he said … no one could tell him what was going to happen. No one told him to make sure that somebody opens the tops on your soda bottles, because you won’t be able to twist the top off. You know, just little stuff like that.”

Her preparations paid off. 

On October 23, Crutchfield traveled to the Cleveland Clinic for the second surgery, where doctors, in eight and a half hours, were able to repair the aneurism and replace her aortic valve with one made from cow tissue. 

The surgery—and it included a full circulatory arrest (when doctors chill the patient’s body and drain all the blood from the body and work on it before the patient goes brain dead)—was a success. But Crutchfield says that going under the knife is just one part of the operation. “The Number One thing in getting past the surgery was to have an awesome network of friends and family, because the recuperation from open-heart surgery … is not linear,” says Crutchfield. Keeping emotionally healthy, she says, is just as important as beginning to rehabilitate the muscles. 

Although Crutchfield’s disease is congenital, heart disease is the single leading cause of death among American women. According to the Women’s Health Foundation, 8 million women in the United States are currently living with heart disease, with 35,000 under the age of 65. As women get older, the risk of heart disease increases. In fact, every year, according to the foundation, about 435,000 American women have a heart attack; 20 percent are under the age of 65. When women under the age of 55 have a heart attack, the chances of it being fatal are twice that of men. 

The foundation reports that, while a heart attack occurs about every 20 seconds, a death caused by a heart attack happens about every minute.

Women who have had a stroke or a heart attack are at higher risk to have a second one: 22 percent of women between 40 and 69 who survive an attack will likely have another one within five years. More than 233,000 women die annually from cardiovascular disease. 

There are many risk factors that contribute to the high rate of heart disease. Chief among them are poor diet, obesity, lack of exercise, smoking and alcohol. 

Exercise is vital component for a healthy lifestyle for all women, especially those recovering from open-heart surgery. 

Because of her naturally slender physique, Crutchfield says that before surgery, and after, she had to buckle down to stay true to her exercise regimen. “I just thought, ‘Oh I stay fit,’” she says smiling. “But there is a difference between running errands and cleaning your house and really getting your heart up to a particular rate and sustaining that for 20 minutes or so.” 

Crutchfield found Pilates and now uses an elliptical machine at least four times a week. “I am mostly trying to get help with the rehabilitation of my chest wall and back, because my muscles were really just atrophied as a result from the surgery,” she says.

On the advice of Beller, soon after surgery Crutchfield began attending cardiac rehab three times a week. Four weeks after surgery she drove herself and her husband, electronics kingpin Bill Crutchfield, to lunch. 

“I was so worried that I was going to get us in an accident,” she says with a smile. “I did it just because I hated not being able to drive. By five weeks, I was driving around.”

Although her doctors lauded her physical tenacity and perfect cholesterol counts, Crutchfield says there were limitations to what she could do: sleeping on her side, for example, and “you can’t lift anything over 10 pounds.

“That was tough because I have a 13-pound Jack Russell Terrier and I wanted to lift her.” 

Crutchfield says her diet was healthy even before surgery, but now, her attention to calorie intake is heightened. “I’ve always been very cognizant of the fact that I don’t want to add any additional heart problems,” she says. Fruits and vegetables are the staple of her diet and she tries to eat protein with each meal. No sodas. The most important aspect of a healthy diet, she says, is portions. 

“I just look at it like I am putting gas in the car,” she says. “I am trying to put fuel in my body, I am not eating for a month. I am not trying to impress anyone on how much I can contain.” 

A typical lunch consists of a turkey sandwich or a salad with olive oil, salt and pepper. When at home, she enjoys cooking her own food, with the help of Cooking Light magazine, something she recommends to all of her friends with heart problems. 

Even when she satisfies her sweet tooth, Crutchfield is careful: a dairy-free miniature ice cream sandwich (90 calories “and just a couple grams of fat,” she says). 

Because of her condition and multiple surgeries, Crutchfield has become an advocate for heart health. “I would say the most important thing is knowledge,” she says. “There is just so much information out there.” Locally, UVA Medical Center has a Club Red for women’s heart health, and Martha Jefferson Hospital has its Heart to Heart program. Another vital step:  Talking to your doctor. “You know how you go in and out and [the doctors] ask you if you have any questions?” says Crutchfield. “Bring a list … ‘Let me share my family history with you. Here is the type of stuff I eat. Here is the exercise I do. Here is my age,’” she says. Take charge of your health care, in other words.

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