It's hard not to laugh around someone as funny and positive as Colleen England.
On a Friday morning, she's walking on the treadmill at ThedaCare Cardiovascular Care, wearing silky boxers with a heart pattern over her jeans.
"These are my favorite boxers!" she said.
But the boxers aren't just for fun, they're to raise awareness of heart disease. It's something Colleen knows about firsthand.
Her humor and positive thinking helped her through a difficult time when she had a heart attack just over four years ago.
"Sometimes you can get so scared and you can be so scared because you came so close to not being here anymore," Colleen said.
Now, Colleen drives to Appleton from her home in New London three days a week to work out at ThedaCare Cardiovascular Care in Appleton. It's part of her recovery and treatment from her heart attack.
"I feel very safe here," she said. "I'm happy that I had the care that I had."
In November of 2012, Colleen was driving to a doctor's appointment in New London when she started having chest pain. Doctors realized she was suffering from a heart attack. She was flown on ThedaStar to ThedaCare Regional Medical Center Appleton, and while there, her heart actually stopped.
"They swished my husband out of the room right away," she said. "He said it was like ER, because he said there were people just running full tilt down the hall towards my room."
But the doctors at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center Appleton helped her make a full recovery.
"One of the big strengths of our program is that we can help those patients right now, and then we can help those people who just need to have a conversation in the office," said Dr. Brian Guttormsen, Interventional Cardiology for ThedaCare.
That means emergency and chronic heart treatment. all under one roof.
Colleen's heart problems are mostly genetic, but Dr. Guttormsen says keeping an eye on risk factors like blood pressure and cholesterol helps people recognize and reduce their risk for heart disease.
For more information on the ThedaCare Cardiovascular Care team, visit their website here.
