CLEVELAND -- Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, and one reason for that is that women don't always recognize the symptoms of a heart attack.

NewsChannel5's Alicia Booth reported on one Shaker Heights woman who nearly died because she failed to recognize her symptoms.

It started last November when Bonnie Daniels was on the phone with her daughter, Angela Harrell.

Harrell listened to her mother's complaints, which were hauntingly similar to the list she had just heard in a women's heart disease awareness class.

"I was telling her, 'Ma, you need to go to the doctor, just get it checked out,' and she says, 'I'm not going to the doctor.' 'No, call 911.' And she said, 'I am not calling 911,'" said Harrell.

That's when Harrell called her cousin, Darryl Tindel, to get over there and get her mom to the hospital.

"He said, 'Auntie, please, just once in your life just do what we tell you to do,' and I'm like, 'Oh, gracious, you all are getting on my last nerve,'" said Daniels.

Tindel said, 'But immediately I said, 'Where's your purse? Put on your coat. Get in the car. Let's go.'"

Just minutes she arrived at University Hospitals, doctors discovered Daniels was having a massive heart attack.

Had she arrived five minutes later, Daniels would have been dead, doctors said.

Her doctor, James Fang, said women especially tend to brush off their symptoms, embarrassed to call 911 when they're not sure what the symptoms mean -- and they can be confusing.

"For example, we call heartburn heartburn because it's like a heart attack and it's very difficult for patients to know the difference and that's our job," said Fang.

Fang said to be aware that the acute onset of symptoms in the chest, between the shoulder blades, above the waist, could be a sign of heart disease.

Daneils no longer ignores the signs and believes there's a reason she survived.

"It was just absolutely something in God's plan -- a divine intervention that was meant for me to stay here and get the word out," she said.

For more information, go to the American Heart Association's Web site.