Soap opera star Susan Lucci recently opened up about a health scare she had back in 2018. The actress told News 12, “Five years ago in October, I had a health scare myself. I had never had any health issues at all ever.”

Lucci went on to explain exactly what happened. She shared that she was with her husband at a restaurant, and they were walking to the table where they were going to be seated. It was at that moment that she “felt a slight, a very slight pressure on my chest, which I had never felt before, but like most women I thought, ‘Oh, it’ll go away. Oh, it’s nothing.'”

She went on to share that the pressure did go away so quickly that she didn’t feel it anymore by the time she reached the table to sit down. However, that wasn’t the end of it.

Lucci continued, “A couple weeks later in a different restaurant the same thing happened. And then a week later I was at a boutique” where she picked out a gift for her pilates trainer. She said, “While the sales woman stepped aside to have the gift wrapped, and suddenly I felt something that I could no longer ignore.”

The pressure was so strong this time that Lucci described it as “the pressure of an elephant pressing on my chest.”

Thankfully, in that moment, Lucci recalled an interview she once saw where a woman shared that “a woman’s symptoms for heart attack, those symptoms are often different than a man’s.”

The manager of the boutique ended up volunteering to drive Lucci to Saint Francis, a nearby heart hospital. On the way there, she called her husband’s cardiologist and he told her, “Meet me at the E.R.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Lucci was still thinking, “It’ll go away. It’s nothing.” She also felt like she shouldn’t even “bother this amazing doctor.”

The doctor ended up discovering that Lucci “had a 90% blockage in my main artery, 75% blockage in my adjacent artery.” She explained that even though “the pain had gone away” it was still “very serious.” The doctor told her, “You could have a heart attack at any time.”

Watch the video below to learn more about Lucci’s health scare including just how serious it really was.

Lucci knew she was incredibly lucky to make it to the hospital in time, and she wanted to warn other women. She said, “I felt magnetized to pay this forward. I could not just keep my good luck for myself.”

Luckily enough, the manager of the boutique where Lucci was shopping, the lady who drove her to the hospital, also had a nursing degree.

Lucci’s word to others is “listen to your body, and if it’s not behaving what’s normal to you, don’t do what I did and wait.” She added, “Take care of you. Take care of yourself. Go to the hospital or call the doctor.”

Watch the video below to learn more about details about Lucci’s serious health scare and what her doctor told her to do going forward.