Lynette Price was hosting a New Year's Day brunch at her Springdale home in 1998 when what she thought was indigestion kicked in.

Tums didn't help. Price felt "like an elephant was lying on my chest."

When she started feeling short of breath, she thought she was having panic attack. Her parents took her to the emergency room.

The doctor asked her if she had a family history of heart disease, and she said yes: Her mother's older brother and sister had each died of heart disease when they were 57. Another uncle has suffered several heart attacks.

Tests showed her blood oxygen level was too low, and her heartbeat was too fast. She was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia originating in the upper regions of the heart.

The doctor told her that, without treatment, her heart would keep racing until it wore out.

Now she takes beta blockers to slow her heart beat. A financial operations analyst at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, she's earning her MBA.

Her daughter Kristen Price, 16, was just a baby when her pediatrician noticed her heartbeat was irregular. Tests showed that she had been born with patent ductus arteriosus, or PDA.

While a baby is in the womb, the ductus arteriosus, a connection between the aorta and pulmonary artery, is open to distribute oxygen from the mother's organs to the baby. The connection normally closes within hours after birth as the baby begins breathing on its own.

The connection in Kristen's heart didn't close, and blood from the aorta and pulmonary artery were mixing. Not only wasn't Kristen getting enough oxygen, but the additional burden was making her heart work too hard.

Simple activities like drinking and walking "looked like such a chore," her mother says.

But Kristen was up and walking the day after the surgery, and she hasn't stopped since: She's president of her class at Princeton High School, an honors student and a member of the dance team.

Little sister Lauren Price, 10, shows no sign of heart disease. "Her doctors knew the risks and they did the tests on her and she was fine," Price says.