Spokane woman advocates being heart proactive after congenital issue

Yolanda Everette-Neufville wields both energy and a contagious laugh, but that extra zeal she feels kicked into higher gear in 2017.

That year, she had unexpected open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve because of a congenital defect. With a heart murmur since birth, she didn’t have any issues until her mid-40s, when her blood pressure rose drastically.

Women tend to ignore feeling unwell, and they can have different symptoms than men, she said.

“We don’t talk about our health and what’s wrong with us, especially women,” said Everette-Neufville, 57, a Go Red ambassador for the American Heart Association. “Your subconscious tells you when there’s something wrong. Do we listen to ourselves? No. Then we end up having other problems.”

Today, the Spokane Valley resident shares her story to encourage others to pay attention to their bodies, and health. People should know their heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers at annual checkups.

Heart murmurs run in her family, including her mother. All her seven siblings had the murmurs at birth. Everette-Neufville has two daughters, and her youngest, 32, has the same issue.

Everette-Neufville grew up in the Valley since age 10 and was always active. She doesn’t recall any shortness of breath. Over the years, she’d had echocardiograms, but her valve issue wasn’t detected. Later on, she was treated for high blood pressure.

Then at 53, she ended up in the hospital for a sinus infection complication. As screenings were done, doctors told her that the hospital’s imaging revealed her heart valves had never grown properly with her heart. She needed the valve surgery immediately, in April 2017.

“The thing of it is, I didn’t know,” she said. “The doctors were amazed that I was functioning with what I had.

“They were saying, ‘We need to take care of this right now; your heart valves literally stopped growing at the age of 13.’ I didn’t realize I wasn’t getting that much oxygen. My body had compensated for so many years that I thought I was normal.”

She noticed a stark difference after surgery. “Having all that oxygen going through my body, I felt like I was on drugs. It was like, wow, a burst of energy. I felt good.”

Still, paying attention to her body paid off two months post-surgery, when she felt ill. As her husband walked in, she told him they needed to go to the hospital. Specialists found that a patch as part of the surgery had come loose, and blood was leaking from the heart with each pump.

“If I hadn’t gone in, the doctor said, ‘You probably wouldn’t have been alive today. Later that night, you would have died,’ ” she said. “I just felt funny, so when I went in, they caught it.”

Her daughter with a heart murmur also has valves that didn’t grow as normal, and she’s being monitored, “because now that I know more, she knows more.

“It’s paying attention to your body and being aware if something is wrong. This has made me more aware. I do pay attention now to my body.”