Fox Sports' Jen Hale on How She's Living with Heart Condition Her Colleague Helped Her Discover
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
FOX Sports Jen Hale
Fox Sports reporter Jen Hale has beaten the odds.
At age 38, Hale, now 43, was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that leads to the ventricle stretching and thinning, affecting its ability to pump blood. Hale's prognosis at the time was just five more years.
Obviously, that timeline has come and gone, and Hale says she has fellow broadcaster Ronde Barber to thank, in part.
In 2016, while on assignment together, Barber noticed Hale was sweating profusely and having trouble breathing. The former NFL player urged her to seek medical attention and not just write off the symptoms.
"Just rolling my suitcase, I was pouring sweat," Hale reflects to PEOPLE. "I was huffing and puffing. He was the one who looked at me and said, 'Uh-uh, something's wrong.' "
At Barber's urging, Hale sought medical attention and got the life-changing diagnosis. Says Hale of her condition, "For me, it was the left side of my heart, which is the side that pumps the blood out into your body."
"The right side was taking in enough blood, but the left side wasn't pumping out enough," she explains. "If you think of your heart like a rubber band, and it expands and pops back, and expands and pops back when it beats, mine wasn't popping back. The left side was big, and floppy and barely moving."
Want to get the biggest stories from PEOPLE every weekday? Subscribe to our new podcast, PEOPLE Every Day, to get the essential celebrity, entertainment and human interest news stories Monday through Friday.
Jen Hale
Although she'd been to doctors before, Hale admits she'd downplay her symptoms and had been ignoring several signs that something was off.
"It's bizarre because I'd been to two different doctors," she recounts. "I kept telling myself it's in my head, stop being a baby, suck it up. It must be something else. It can't be anything that serious, they would've found it. So one, I learned to trust my gut, but two, I also learned — and I don't know if this is a female thing, I don't want to say it's just females, but I certainly think it applies — I think we don't ever want to show signs of weakness. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was almost like I was apologizing for taking their time."
She continues, "[I'd say] 'Well, I'm a little short of breath,' instead of saying, 'No, something's really wrong. I can't breathe when I lay down. That's not normal.' "
Hale also notes that she had misconceptions about heart conditions, even though her father and uncle suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy: "I attributed heart attacks to unhealthy eating and smoking. ... And I figured that's what gave one a heart attack, which is not necessarily always the case by any stretch."
The broadcaster's journey eventually led to her putting her name on a heart transplant list, but over two and a half years, she was able to regulate her disease with medication. There are several things that played a factor in her lasting health, she notes.
"One thing working in my favor was my age and my health condition before being diagnosed," Hale tells PEOPLE. "I had no underlying conditions. I worked out every day. I didn't smoke, I led a very healthy lifestyle. One of the things working against me was, I waited so long to figure out what it was that was wrong with me. My heart was down to a 16% pumping capacity. Only 16% of what was supposed to be getting pumped, blood-wise throughout my body, was being pumped."
Hale also took time educating herself on her condition, she says, noting that she tries to be "smart" with things like diet and exercise.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
She's now focused on paying it forward and using her voice and platform to work with the American Heart Association and help others who may be in similar scenarios.
"One of my big inspirations to get involved with the American Heart Association is — it just struck me and my family, how vastly different the outcome for me was with the same condition my dad and uncle had 20 years ago when they had no options," Hale says. "And for families to talk about the medical history. If I had been telling healthcare providers all along that there was a history of dilated cardiomyopathy in my family, we probably would've caught this thing at the very beginning."
