This sounds very familiar. I had peritonitis last year and it made me try to make other people go away and leave me alone, to the point of irrationality, which is unusual for me. Afterwards I kept thinking, “why the hell was I acting that way?!”
I felt weak and with some chest pain, but not a lot. As it happened I had an appointment with my doctor that morning and he was part of a clinic that also ran a hospital. He took one look at me, did a cardiogram and a minute later I was in the hospital. That was 48 years ago and there wasn’t much–outside of bed rest–that they did for heart attacks. A couple of cardiac ultrasounds I’ve had in the past ten years found no evidence of scar tissue. However, I do have atrial fibrillation and now a pacemaker.
My daughter had kicked me in the chest earlier in the evening, so I thought my squeezing pain was a broken rib. I couldn’t sleep, and wasn’t comfortable lying down or sitting. I woke my wife at 3 a.m. and told her I was driving myself to the hospital. Her famous answer was, “You know, if it’s not an emergency the insurance won’t cover it.”
She got to work (at the hospital where I was), and I was still in the ER. I had a CABG x4 a few days later.
Y’know, I can’t explain that one, either, but you are not alone. It’s so very common, that exact phrase, “a feeling of [impending] doom” that it’s in textbooks. If a patient uses that phrase, it’s time for an MI work up. I mean, who uses the word “doom” in daily life, except in relation to video games or eldritch terrors? People having heart attacks, that’s who.
(“The worst headache ever,” is the flag for a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Those two are the phrases that got pounded into our heads in nursing school.)
But my husband’s only symptom during his heart attack was profuse sweating, and the certain knowledge that he was having a heart attack. Even he doesn’t know how he knew, but he just knew.
Well, here’s a first hand account from the last post of member Gurujulp.
Warning, he didn’t live.
A close acquaintance of mine, a man, had a “womans” heart attack. He was having extreme back pain and was trying to make appointments with the chiropractors when he couldn’t stand the pain any more and went to the local ER. Ended up having emergency bypass surgery (quadruple I think).
About 15 years ago the Sergeant that was doing our roll call suddenly sat down in front of us all and said “boys. I’m afraid I’m about to make your day real fucking interesting!” He had a massive heart attack, out of the blue (no prior cardiac problems, not overweight in the least, didn’t drink or smoke). We goddamned near broke his rips pumping on his chest. Which wouldn’t have mattered as after they Pulp Fictioned his heart they cut him open for a triple bypass. He later told us it felt like 500 pounds on his chest while he was standing there talking to us.
And, unfortunately, many people having panic attacks. I’ve been to the ER four times with symptoms that I feared were heart attacks (tight chest, parasthesia down my face and arms, feeling of dread/doom, racing heart of 120+bpm). Fortunately, to put it mildly, each time it was just a panic attack (I have panic disorder). But it certainly could have turned out differently. I would say that, especially if you’re female and have any difficulty breathing or lightheadedness that isn’t explained by some other current health condition, or anything that seems unusual even if you do have GERD or asthma or whatever, do not wait for the prototypical symptoms you usually hear for heart attacks. Women often don’t get them. Each time I’ve gone to the ER I’ve gotten an EKG, one time a sonogram, and then they took my blood and looked for certain “markers,” I forget what that means, and waited six hours before taking a second blood test to check again.
Whenever I’ve been at the ER for eight hours after waiting for the various tests to come back and feel like a waste of space for having gone when it turns out to be ‘just’ panic, the ER staff always tell me: better to go and have it turn out to be panic, than to not go the one time it isn’t. Three times I took a cab to the ER; the fourth I decided fuck it, I’m calling an ambulance. I was told they’d get me to the ER faster than the usual way.
(However, the EMTs seemed not to think it was anything serious despite my heart rate at 120 and b/p being 180/150 since they stopped at every freaking light – and this without traffic, too! Glad to know they were conscientious about following the law! In retrospect it’s amusing but at the time the lack of sirens and their casual driving didn’t help my panic.)
Wow, you mean he mistook his heart attack symptoms for a gastric problem, then died of it in his sleep? 
I’ve read and heard that many times people having heart attacks crank up denial to 11. I wonder how true that is.
Yes.
This is true. Panic attacks feel so very much like heart attacks sometimes. Still, always best to get it checked out - even people who have had 4 panic attacks can have a heart attack the 5th time. Luckily, ER medicine is pretty great at differentiating a panic attack from a heart attack. I’ve got lots of ER working friends, and I can say that while “frequent flyers” for sore throats and colds are sometimes snickered about in their off hours, panic attack v heart attack patients are not.
When heart muscle is damaged, certain chemicals are released in your blood. So when they take your blood, they look for those chemicals. They take blood a few times (usually two or three) over time to look to see if they’re increasing (not good, probably going to call the cath lab and get you in for an angiogram like rightnow) or not present or decreasing (run some more tests). Different levels of different markers help them to narrow down what’s happening, whether that be a myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, ischemia or something else, and even how long it’s been since that heart tissue was damaged. The chemicals, collectively, are called “cardiac markers” or “cardiac enzymes”. Cardiac markers is more correct - the ones they had tests for first were indeed enzymes, but some of the most useful ones now, like troponin, are not enzymes. Cardiac marker - Wikipedia
I wish everyone within reach of a 911-type of service would heed this.
Never, ever, EVER drive yourself or someone else if you suspect a heart attack.
Wait, his wife said he had symptoms the day before. Can heart attacks progress that slowly?
You can read Harlan Ellison’s account here http://books.google.com/books?id=Mrzymip4y8EC&lpg=PA12&dq=harlan%20ellison%20heart%20attack%20slippage&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q=“pains%20started%20early”&f=false. He had chest pains for 3 days. He finally went to the hospital and, after a day or two there, had quadruple bypass surgery.
Yes. They can also happen and you don’t realize it until months or years later, when you have a routine EKG at a well check up for the insurance company and the doctor off-handedly mentions “evidence of an old infarct” and scares the pants off you.
Heart attacks can be big, little, dramatic or silent, multiple or single, quick or slow. Part of this is just different anatomy, and part of it that there are several different types of heart damage that people call “a heart attack” that doctors would call different things.
The fact that heart attacks have share symptoms with other common illnesses are one of the things which prevent people from going to the hospital in time. One of my best friends, a doctor told me that he has seen what he was certain was a heart attack at first instance and it come out to be gastric issues and he has seen what he thought was indigestion, be heart attacks. Apparently, until the enzymes tests come, they cannot be sure and apparently even THAT is not completely perfect.
Mine started out like the skin on my chest was burning. I had actually been using a medicated skin cream and the doctor had said it might cause a reaction, so I thought that was what was going on. But the burning got stronger and stronger, and then started to feel like pressure. I have heard people say that it felt like an elephant was sitting on their chest, and that’s exactly what it felt like. I did try lying down for a few minutes but didn’t feel any better, which I later heard was typical of heart attacks. But no pain, just pressure/squeezing.
I had no clue it was a heart attack, though (I was young and healthy), but I did feel that Something Was Definitely Wrong Here. So I got my kids off to school and drove to the ER (yes, stupid, I know now, but I still thought it was a reaction to the skin cream).
Walked into the hospital and told them my chest hurt; they started asking me questions and I must have started slurring, because they got me in a wheel chair fast and asked questions later.
They must have been doing the enzyme tests on me, as I was there a few hours before the told me it was a heart attack. But maybe an hour after I got there, I felt just fine and wanted to go to work, but they wouldn’t let me leave.
My husband had just been diagnosed with cancer. We’d just adopted a large, young dog who yanked me around quite a bit when I walked her. So, when I got this strange feeling in between my shoulder blades walking into work one morning, I thought “eh, pulled muscles”.
Sunday morning, I was walking into church and got the feeling again. By the time I made it all the way in, I was also having pain in my armpits, and experienced a crying jag due to the panic I was feeling. I thought this time “panic attack”.
Already long story short, heart attack at 51, no prior symptoms/risk factors, no family history. 2 stents, but no permanent damage 
Yeah, my husband was in the ER a couple summers ago for heatstroke, and one of those turned up on his EKG. Scared the crap out of me.
A patient of ours (I work in ophthalmology) was complaining at one visit that he’d pulled a pectoral muscle while working out. At his next visit, he told me he’d learned that was actually a heart attack.
This makes me feel heart attacks are more common than we think, but not as serious. I thought heart attack meant you had 1 hour to live without treatment, and they couldn’t get better on their own.