Earlier today, Rosie O'Donnell blogged about having had a heart attack last week. Earlier this year, Mr. O'Donnell purchased a luxury condo from the Rudin family in the complex that used to be St. Vincent's Hospital, before it closed. Everybody is glad that Rosie is doing better, and we all wish her a speedy recovery. Some community activists hope that Ms. O'Donnell will see her heart attack as a wake-up call to create a full-service, Level I Trauma center in the Lower West Side. With the Rudin family's luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, there is now no trauma-emergency care in the entire Lower West Side of Manhattan.
About the EMS response and transport time that people live in fear in the West Village, the artist and political blogger, Suzannah B. Troy, wrote that Ms. O'Donnell "would not have made it to Beth Israel like Richard Scheirer --- Rudy Giuliani's guy that died because he had a stroke and did not make it from the West Village where there is no St. Vincent's Hospital -- no trauma level 1 hospital."
2011-12-25 Bill Rudin Robber Baron Band-Aid Flyer(CBS News) Rosie O'Donnell says she is "lucky to be here" after suffering a heart attack last week.
O'Donnell, 50, detailed the experience on her blog Monday, saying that she helped lift an "enormous woman" out of her car on Aug. 14 - and that a few hours later, her chest ached, her arms were sore, she became nauseous and had clammy skin.
She initially thought she had pulled a muscle, she continued, but then added in her free-verse writing style, "Maybe this is a heart attack/i googled womens heart attack symptoms/i had many of them/but really? - i thought - naaaa."
O'Donnell said she took a few aspirin ("Thank god/saved by a tv commercial/literally") and went to a cardiologist the next day.
She said her coronary artery was 99 percent blocked. A stent was inserted.
"They call this type of heart attack/the Widow maker/i am lucky to be here," she wrote. "Know the symptoms ladies/listen to the voice inside/the one we all so easily ignore/CALL 911/save urself."
A rep for O'Donnell told Us Weekly that she is now "home and resting comfortably." Earlier this month, she revealed that her fiancee, Michelle Rounds, was diagnosed with desmoid tumors.
The comedian recently hosted "The Rosie Show" on the Opera Winfrey Network. It was canceled in March.
