After 40 years of smoking and drinking, and six hours in the emergency room yesterday, not only was I not having a heart attack, I have no arterial blockage at all.
Might be a good idea to try and keep it that way, I suppose.
Oh, good! What was going on?
My SO didn’t have a heart attack either, he had a cardiac event, then had bypass surgery.
Trust me when I say that you don’t want to do that.
Honestly, given my habits, my age, and my family history, I expected bypass surgery, or, at the least, angioplasty. Before I left for the hospital, I arranged my apartment for an absence, and made sure I had my cell phone. (I did forget to grab a book. I thought I’d be otherwise occupied.) I was pretty surprised to hear that I could go home.
If you had the time/presence of mind to do all that, you weren’t having a heart attack. A real one stikes like Maxwell’s Siver Hammer and you can’t think about anything else.
Hope you have good health from now on. It’s your choice whether to change your habits. I, for one, now go for quality, not quantity.
Well, it seems that he must have been doing the right thing for the last 40 years!
Even a mild one?
When my dad had a mild heart attack, he left a note for my mom and walked (through the back fields behind my elementary school) to the hospital.
So, he could do those things, though I’m not sure how good his judgment was!
Frank: Happy to hear all is well!
I’m not entirely convinced of that. My uncle’s heart attack made him feel queasy and “not right” for half a day before he decided he should go to the hospital. His cardiac arrest happened just as they were getting him into a wheelchair in the ER waiting room, because the triage nurse recognized he was having a big problem. Resuscitation was not successful.
I believe cardiac events can present themselves in many ways, some obvious and immediate, and some over the course of hours and even days.
I’m glad you got checked out, Frank, and I’m glad you’re fine!
Yup, I had a patient (I work in ophthalmology) complain to both me and one of the doctors I work for that he thought he’d pulled a pectoral muscle while working out. His wife is a doctor, as well. At his next visit, he reported the heart attack he’d actually had!
Frank, glad to hear at least that wasn’t the problem, and good for you for deciding to do what you can to keep it that way.
Heart attacks are rarely the unambiguous “clutch your hand to your chest and fall over grimacing” events that you see on TV. Some people feel chest pain, true. Some feel crushing or pressure, some feel pain in the shoulder and/or radiating down the arm (left shoulder pain is famous, but it can be right shoulder pain or pain between the shoulder blades, too.) You might feel short of breath or dizzy or or tired or weak or you might not. You may feel, as the textbooks call it, “a feeling of impending doom.” That’s a fun one, and yes, people report it just like that.
My SO had a heart attack 10 years ago, and his *only *symptom was profuse sweating. “Like someone turned a tap on over my head,” he describes it. No pain, no nothing but sweating, and the right coronary artery was completely blocked and needed a stent to open it.
Women tend to have even more “atypical” heart attack symptoms. They often have indigestion, nausea, vomiting and sometimes weakness and fatigue. Pretty vague symptoms, eh? And definitely something you can walk around with for quite a while, until you fall down dead.
Topical topic, Frank. Happy American Heart Month. Glad you’re still with us to enjoy it!
Wrong, and worse, horrible advice. Since many people die because their “heartburn” was a heart attack.
In high school my father’s best friend had a heart attack. He was an MD and it happened while he was driving himself into work. He rather calmly drove himself to the nearest ER, which was quite a distance since we lived in the boonies and lived another 15 years.
Frank, did you discover a hidden angina?
I was 10 miles back in the Oregon brush when a sudden jolt in my chest brought me to my knees and had to walk out terrified the entire way that the exertion was going to cause ‘the big one.’ Pluresy, whew.
Glad you’re posting from home and not the ER.
There is Pericarditis which is an inflammation of the heart lining. Treated with anti-inflammatory’s (aspirin). Probably the best thing to have when you’re taken to the hospital with chest pains.
My mother and sister are telling me it was a gall bladder attack. I’ve got to follow up with a primary doctor, so maybe I’ll find out.
Becky2844, I’ve heard many stories of people who say, “I don’t need to go to the hospital, I just don’t feel quite right.” Then some hours later, they fall over.
My husband has had two heart attacks - the first in 1998 and the second last Tuesday. No pain at all, just discomfort and sweating. He was able to get by with stents both times even though this time the artery was 99% blocked.
I know many have already refuted this, but this statement is so wrong (and irresponsible), it deserves emphasis.
So…if you have the presence of mind to grab Steve Jobs’ autobiography on the way out the door, *the condition of your heart remains unknown.
*
mmm
UNTRUE. Myocardial infarctions range from silent but deadly to massively painful yet surprisingly limited in size. Do NOT judge the severity of the damage based on subjective pain.
Glad you’re OK, Frank. But I don’t know that the take-away from this
should be “keep doing what you’re doing”. IYSWIM.
Regards,
Shodan
Okay, maybe I’m wrong but I don’t mean to be irresponsible. It was my opinion only and IANAD. Heart attacks do come about in different ways and I should have taken the time to think about that. I was going by my husband’s two heart attacks, one severe and one mild. Both we’re so painful that the only thing to do was go. But I do know that women present differently and that heart disease in the #1 killer of both men and women.
And again, I’m glad the OP is alright.
Now You can make your fortune with a book called, “Smoking and Drinking Your Way to Good Heat Health!”