Diane Bergeron could hardly have picked a more appropriate day than Monday to begin her cardiac rehabilitation therapy.

Bergeron, a 65-year-old retired public school teacher who lives in Norwich, began what will be a 12-week, thrice-weekly regimen of exercise in the cardiac rehabilitation center at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich as the final stage in her recovery from an October heart attack and subsequent surgery.

The start of her sessions comes at the start of the Women's Heart Week, a designation intended to call attention to the fact that cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of women in the United States. The week culminates in the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women campaign on Friday, when people are asked to wear red as a reminder of the prevalence of heart disease among women and the importance of taking steps to reduce the risk.

Both Backus and Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London are asking employees to wear red on Friday and are collecting donations for the American Heart Association.

"I'm 4-foot-11 and I weigh 108 pounds, I exercise and I'm not a smoker or a big drinker," Bergeron, a former art teacher in Montville public schools, said Monday. "I never thought I was a person that would have a heart attack."

Had she known then what she knows now - that heart attacks are a real possibility for women - she said, she would have gotten to the doctor sooner. For about three weeks, she said, she had shortness of breath and a pain in her chest area she wrongly assumed was a muscle pull from gardening.

One night, the pain and breathing problems worsened. After several hours, she and her husband went to Backus, where doctors did tests and quickly sent her by ambulance to Yale-New Haven Hospital for cardiac catheterization surgery to relieve a severe blockage in two arteries.

"Now I watch my cholesterol a lot more than I ever did," Bergeron said.

At L&M, registered nurse Elizabeth Angelopoulos said too many women end up in the hospital's cardiac catheterization lab who, like Bergeron, should have sought medical help for their heart attack symptoms sooner. If they had, their recovery would have been shorter and the damage to their heart less.

"There is still a lack of awareness of the symptoms," Angelopoulos said. "They're so different for women than they are for men, and women tend to ignore their symptoms or put off doing anything about them until they're really sick."

About 40 to 45 percent of the approximately 900 patients who come to L&M's lab for a cardiac catheterization or angioplasty annually are women, she said. The most common symptoms are abdominal pain, indigestion and shortness of breath. Some of her female patients had no heart attack risk factors such as obesity and smoking other than a lot of stress in their lives, she said.

Reducing stress with regular exercise is a good way to reduce risk, Angelopoulos added, and quitting smoking is essential.

At the library at L&M, which is open to the public, Angelopoulos and a colleague have put together a display of books, cookbooks, handouts and exercise videos about women's heart health.

Risk factors for heart attack, which occurs when a blockage in one of the arteries obstructs flow of blood to the heart, are the same in both sexes: genetic predisposition, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, lack of exercise, smoking, obesity, diabetes and stress. In addition, women's risk increases after menopause due to the drop in levels of estrogen, which is heart-protective.

But, Angelopoulos noted, women experience a heart attack differently from men. For men, the most common symptoms are chest pains or pressure that can spread to the neck, jaw and left arm, sweating and shortness of breath. Women, however, tend to experience one or more of the following: nausea, shortness of breath, cramping chest pain, back pain, neck, jaw and left arm pain, palpitations, indigestion, dizziness, fatigue, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping and fainting.

New London cardiologist Dr. Jon Gaudio, who will give a talk on the subject at L&M next Monday, said one of the reasons heart attacks are more often fatal for women than for men is that women on average are older when they are stricken. But he believes there may be another reason, too.

"Anecdotally, it seems women just ignore their symptoms," he said.

Because their symptoms are less specific to heart attacks than they are for men, he added, it can take longer for patients and doctors to sort out the real cause.

"The best thing is to have a good relationship with your doctor, and to be aware of the symptoms," he said.