LSU had to deal with another health crisis over the summer. Women’s head basketball coach Kim Mulkey had to undergo heart surgery to clear up blockage, according to ESPN.
Mulkey had the surgery back in June, not too long after the season ended. ESPN wrote that Mulkey “had two stents put into a coronary artery that had 95-99% blockage. Mulkey had not experienced symptoms and had no idea she had any heart issues.”
“I never even felt bad. I’m still kind of in shock that we accidentally found this,” Mulkey told ESPN. “So my message in sharing this is, if you’re over 50, go get a stress test.
“I’ve had some of my former teammates tell me, ‘We’re going to do it.’ That’s why I share these things. I’m an open book if it’s something that can help people. It’s just a great lesson for all of us who think that it won’t happen to us,” she told ESPN.
At first, she thought everything was fine, but then her test results came back, and her cardiologist gave her the news.
“He said, let’s put you on the treadmill and do a stress test,” Mulkey said. “Then he said, ‘I don’t like the way this isn’t pumping faster; it looks like there’s a little blockage going on. We’ve got to do a cath.'”
She admitted that she was lucky her doctor found the issue in time.
“The issue with my heart; It was really just luck that we found it. So I will keep telling people, ‘Get yourself checked out. You have nothing to lose, and it could save your life,” she said.
