As you saw in the video, people with FH aren’t sitting on the sidelines. Many joined the Race for FH, each in their own way and for their own reason.
Aletha
raced in honor of her six-year-old granddaughter Aubree. Aubree has a severe form of FH. Every two weeks her parents drive her hundreds of miles so she can undergo a procedure called apheresis. This is the only way to clear the heart-damaging cholesterol from her blood. Still, Aubree may need open heart surgery before she is an adult.
Dan
, along with his wife, biked 1,000 miles in September. Dan didn’t know he had FH until
after
his quadruple bypass surgery at 32, even though he lived healthy lifestyle on a strict vegan diet. He says, “If I had been diagnosed when I was ten, I could have very well avoided heart disease all together.”
Mackenzie
formed a team of family members called “Run for the Hills” to raise awareness about this inherited condition. The Hills have lost numerous family member over generations. For years, they didn’t have a name for FH, so they called it “the Hill Family curse.”
