BATON ROUGE - LSU women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey told ESPN that a tingling at the tip of her finger led to a heart surgery to fix an artery that was almost completely blocked. 

One month after Mulkey guided the Tigers to a national title, the coach was sitting at home and made the decision to make a doctor's appointment to check out a tingling she'd felt in her left middle finger. Her diagnosis ended up being carpal tunnel, which she expected, according to ESPN, but she'd requested an X-ray of her neck to make sure everything was running smoothly following a disk replacement surgery she'd had in 2018. 

When doctors examined her X-rays, they saw a buildup of plaque in her carotid artery. 

"They told me, 'You were 95-99% blocked in one artery,'" Mulkey said. "And I said, 'Doc, why didn't I feel bad in any way?' He said, 'You're what's called an asymptomatic patient. You're the ones that can die suddenly and drive cardiologists crazy.' I asked if I was likely to have had a heart attack without the procedure, and he said, 'Yes, eventually.'

"The issue with my heart, it was really just luck that we found it. So I will keep telling people, 'Get yourself checked out. You have nothing to lose, and it could save your life.'"