Yasmin Vossoughian, best known as the anchor of MSNBC, has decided to open up about her health after more than a month of suffering.
Vossoughian, 44, has now returned on the air and has shared the reason why she’s been absent with her viewers, confirming that she’s been “dealing with a bit of a health scare.”
According to a report by PEOPLE, the anchor started by sharing that “On December 20, I began to feel chest pains which waxed and waned over a period of 10 days. I was not quite sure what to make of it all but as it continued to get worse I began to think something was actually wrong.”
On the last day of December, she went to urgent care where she was told that what she was experiencing was simply reflux and nothing more.
However, the journalist was not really convinced by the diagnosis she’d received, telling her audience that “I didn’t buy it. But I was relieved that it was not my heart. My body though, was certain not to believe the reflux.”
And sure enough, by the following day, the pain had become unbearable, leading to another trip to the hospital.
Yasmin recalls that “I woke up with serious pains both in my chest and left shoulder. It felt like a tightening in my chest. I took deep breaths that just got worse when I was laying flat. I knew enough at that moment that it could mean I was having a heart attack, especially because it was on the left shoulder.”
In spite of being a “pretty healthy person” who does not eat meat, does not smoke or drink alcohol and who runs 7 miles a few times every week, the personality tested positive for pericarditis, which, Cleveland Clinic explains, is an inflammation of the sac containing the heart.
Vossoughian explained that this condition is actually often a result of the common cold.
Referencing the gender health gap, where women’s symptoms are often overlooked or misdiagnosed by doctors, Vossoughian told Insider that “A lot of times as women specifically, we don’t trust our gut, we don’t trust our instincts because we’re pleasers, society tells us to be pleasers. My advice is listen to your gut.”
After being treated and released from the hospital, however, the nightmare continued.
Only three days later, she was also diagnosed with myocarditis, which unlike the previous diagnosis, involves the inflammation of the heart muscle.
It was so bad that the media person recalls thinking, “this is it” at times but fortunately, she was very responsive to treatment and now she’s doing very well.
And sure enough, upon inviting her cardiologist, Dr. Greg Katz, on the show to discuss the health scare, it was confirmed that it was all caused by how her immune system reacted to just a cold.
