Most people aren’t thinking about heart conditions and pacemakers before their thirties, but actress Julie Bowen recently revealed the scary heart condition that left her feeling like she was “gonna die” when she was 29 years old. The 55-year-old actress was speaking to Michael Rosenbaum on his podcast, “Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum” when she revealed the sudden diagnosis. The actress currently lives with what is known as Sick sinus syndrome, a condition that leads to irregular heartbeats and a dangerously low heartrate.

Growing up, however, Bowen hadn’t seemed like the sort of person who would suffer from a heart condition. She had been a runner throughout high school and had run competitively for years, knowing that her heart rate was low but never thinking about it. It wasn’t until her sister, Annie Luetkemeyer, who was a med student, checked her heart rate that there became a real concern. “We were on vacation, and she was like, ‘I want to listen to this. And she listened to my heart, and she was like, ‘That is not what they’ve been telling you. And it’s not runner’s heart or whatever. … You need to go to a cardiologist immediately,’” Bowen recalled.

Despite the warning, Bowen didn’t want to take the concerns seriously. But her sister did. “She told me, and she wouldn’t let it go. I was like, I’m fine. She would not let it go.” A month later, after she shot the pilot episode for the TV show “Ed,” things took a drastic turn. “”I shot the pilot of ‘Ed’ and immediately had to go get a pacemaker afterwards,” she said. It was a sobering moment for Bowen. “[I thought] ‘My life is over. This is so weird. I’m gonna die.’ I don’t know what I thought it was because I was 29,” she said. Had she not received the pacemaker, Bowen was at risk for passing out. “There was a vague feeling … whenever I was relaxed, really relaxed, I’d be, like, watching TV or [a] movie. It felt like I’d been holding my breath for a while, that feeling of, like, lightheadedness,” she said. “And they said, ‘You’re gonna be driving a car, and you’re gonna pass out, and you’re gonna kill somebody.’”

Bowen revealed that prior to her pacemaker, her resting heart rate had been in the 30s. Her pacemaker does not let it get any lower than 45. Now that she has the pacemaker, it has become such a part of her life that she hardly notices it until it’s time for a new battery, which she’s had to do about three times. “I forget about it all the time,” she said.