I was in the antacid section at the grocery store, turning and leaving the aisle when a guy asked me which antacid he should get. I started talking to him about the options and the reasons for using this one or that one when he went on to say that he doesn’t just feel burning any more, but pain. I said where, and he gestured to his chest, and that the burning he had been having before had gone all the way up to his neck. He said he had a Dr. appointment for the morning, but was thinking maybe he had something else going on, and I was beginning to suspect that, too. He already had a big jar of aspirin in his hand. I said that was bad for heartburn issues like GERD, but if he was thinking he had something with his heart going on right now, take two and get to the hospital. While we were talking, a friend of his came into the aisle, and his friend seemed fairly concerned about this guy’s discomfort.
I told him if he was having trouble taking a deep breath or felt tingling/numbness/pain in his arms that he should go to the ER, pronto. He was like, well, I thought my trouble with breathing was from being in the heat all day (93 and humid in Chicago today), and my hands are tingly. I realized that he did look a bit - grey - and tired.
I said I thought he really should go to the hospital now. Tell them you’re having chest pain and numbness in your arm. They’ll get you right in. One of my uncles just died 6 weeks ago while they were putting him in a wheelchair in the ER waiting room. Don’t mess with this, better safe than sorry!
They left the store soon after, but didn’t seem in too much of a hurry. But I don’t think that guy was really able to hurry. I hope they went.
Reminds me of a story. I know a surgeon who told me this. He was returning home one night after a shift at the hospital, still dressed in his scrubs. At a tollbooth, the operator said, “Hey, are you a doctor?”
“Yeah”
“I’ve been having this weird pain in my left side. What do you think I should do?”
“I think you should go see your doctor and ask about it.”
“OK!”
Flash forward several months, and the surgeon is going through the tollbooth again, sees the same operator, and recognizes him.
“Hey, do you remember me?”
“Yeah, did you ever see your doctor?”
“I sure did. I’m just starting back to work after having a quadruple bypass operation. Thanks for the tip, you saved my life!”
It’s amazing how often some people (men seem to be worst about it) will often ignore things like this until it is too late. I guess it’s denial or fear. I really hope that guy went to the hospital right after you talked to him. As a doc, I agree that it sounds like something much worse than normal heartburn.
Another tip from an emergency medicine doctor I met: If you’re having chest pain, CALL AN AMBULANCE. Do NOT try to drive yourself to the hospital. Every year, in the small community where that doctor works, they end up having one or two people with chest pain go into cardiac arrest on the side of the road on their way to the hospital. Unlike in TV/movies, in real life almost nobody survives once they go into cardiac arrest - the only chance you might have is if you’re in an ambulance with a crew who can immediately try to work on bringing you back. It is dangerous and foolish to try to drive yourself when you could be having a heart attack.
I’ve had two occasions where I was feeling heart-attack symptoms for up to a day (or maybe more)–shortness of breath, nausea, tightness in my chest, generalized pain on the left side of my body–and I finally gave in and sought out medical assistance (belatedly).
Turned out to be heartburn, anxiety, whatever. I felt like an idiot and a whoreson waster of my time.
Please don’t feel like an idiot. Far better to “waste” your time getting checked out than to…well…check out.
SeaDragonTattoo, you were absolutely right to urge him to go to the ER. I would have, too. And if that was a test question, absolutely further assessment would be warranted.
Heart attacks can be weird. Sometimes there are the classic symptoms (crushing chest pain, pain and tingling down the left side, shortness of breath) and sometimes there are no symptoms at all. Sometimes there are weird ones. My SO had a heart attack at 50 years old, and his only symptom was sweating. Copious amounts of sweat pouring down over his head and neck, and it was from a heart attack. (Luckily, he “just knew” it was a heart attack and got in pronto.)
Women are more likely to have unusual or no symptoms from a heart attack, but it can happen to men, too. When in doubt, get checked out!
Don’t feel like an idiot. No one in an emergency room is going to give you grief for seeking emergency assistance for chest pain. They would far rather you go and have them find nothing than have you not go and wind up dead. Chest pain is nothing to fool around with.
ETA: or what WhyNot said. Apparently I’m too slow on the submit button.
When my 22 year old nephew was 3 or 4, I was tossing him in the air and catching him. I felt a pop, then pain in my sternum. Turns out I dislocated two parts (the manubrium and body) of my sternum.
When there was increasing pain throughout the next two or three days, I finally ended up at the ER. There were people who appeared to be dying in the waiting room, but against my protests I was rushed straight back.
My SO had a heart attack in February. He is 33, and in (seemingly, until that night) good health. He had severe back pain that woke him up. I never in a million years would have thought “heart attack” and I gave him some advil and ran him a hot bath. He is pretty stoic, but I could tell it hurt a lot so I made him make an appointment the next day. He went in and as he described it, his doctor seemed concerned. They hooked him up to the machine with the sticky bits on it (I forget what its called). When the doctor said it was a heart attack I literally almost passed out. They actually called the ambulance from the doctors office, and he was wheeled out on a stretcher through the waiting room. At the hospital they found major blockages in two arteries and gave him stents. And yes, they move quickly. It was surreal.
When I think back to that night, and how I blithely gave him advil, I just want to cry. Thank goodness he was ok. You can’t ever be too careful.
One of my best friends, age 45, had an MI last winter. He started with the nausea and vomiting about 3 a.m. He didn’t go to the hospital until 12 hours later, when, after talking with another friend, she urged him to get it checked out. Same sort of general malaise symptoms that don’t necessarily make one think “heart attack”: nausea, vomiting, cold-sweaty, feeling tired…
My friend had three or four stents put in and got meds to get his diabetes under control. But it took several friends urging him to go in and have it checked out. He thought he ate some bad sushi or something.
When I was working at a doctor’s office I received a phone call. The guy was complaining about chest pains, shortness of breath, other classic symptoms. When I said he should call an ambulance, he replied, “Oh, I ahve a flight to Toronto this afternoon, should I go before that?”
My poor stomach is aching at the very thought of someone with stomach problems taking aspirin! Yeah, he needs to get checked out by a professional - the aspirin would be good if it’s his heart, and very bad if it’s his stomach.
When I had an ovarian cyst rupture, I had a fever and abdominal pain - that’s also a key to going straight in.
This thread was pretty timely, since just this morning I woke up with some pretty bad aching that felt like it was in my chest/lungs (and some other stuff I won’t get into). I ended up calling a low-cost clinic I go to. The operator gave my call to a nurse, who told me it was probably stomach acid related, since I got the impression the aching eased when I sat up, and I’d already been diagnosed with acid reflux years ago for unrelated symptoms.
It was pretty scary, though; never felt anything like that. If that was just acid, I’d hate to experience a “real” heart attack (for other than the obvious reasons)!
I used to have panic attacks a lot, and they always felt the same way. Well, about a year or so ago, and after getting my panic attacks rather under control, I had a very odd sensation. My chest was tight and my left arm had shooting pain. I was having some difficulty breathing and I thought I was having a heart attack.
Well, after a trip to the ER and a handful of tests, they diagnosed a major panic attack. It was so unlike everything I had ever felt, but we decided that the pain was delayed pain from the afternoon I spent raking leaves, and then I started freaking myself out to the point of a major panic attack.
I was at work one day and I was suddenly light-headed, and I had a chest pains on the right side that seemed to radiate into the breast and my back. I was bundled into an ambulance, hooked up on an IV (after 5 sticks - I have crappy veins) and taken to the hospital some 40 minutes away.
Fortunately (I guess) it was gall stones. Had the gallbladder removed a month later. But for a while there, some of us were pretty scared…
Don’t beat yourself up over this too much. If my SO woke me up because he had a backache, he’d be lucky to get Advil and sympathy (although I’ll be rethinking that attitude now).
Diabetics are pretty classic for having silent heart attacks. Poorly-controlled diabetes often causes damage to the nerves that would normally transmit a sensation of chest pain.
I have stomach-acid issues that flare up once in a while. It can really, really hurt. I have to practice lamaze breathing to get through it when it happens, and yes, I will put it up there with labor pain. If I didn’t know what it was I would think it was a heart attack too (and I have gone in to ER more than once to get pain relief for it.) I can see why people confuse the 2.
My boss dropped dead from a heart attack at the office a few years ago. He was saying the day before he was not feeling very well, but he came in that morning and was walking around fine until he suddenly leaned on a doorframe, said “I don’t feel well” and bam - that was it. It was horrible. I agree with everyone saying if you don’t feel well and you just have a feeling something is wrong, get it checked out. I think people often have the inkling something is seriously wrong but they talk themselves out of it. Usually when we are just sick we don’t get that ‘ominous’ feeling. I have taken CPR/first aid classes and one of the signs of heart attack (for men and women) is simply “sense of doom.”
