When I was a kid, I fell on top of a ground nest of yellow-jackets. I received multiple stings to my face, ears, & head. I looked like I had gone three rounds with Muhammed Ali.
I have found that the pain associated with bee stings can vary greatly. When I was a boy, I was often stung and the pain was often minor. As I got older I have noticed that the pain (and reaction) has gone up dramatically. Maybe I am becoming more sensitive to bee venom? Now days, if I get stung the pain is rather intense (feels very much like a burn that won’t subside for several hours) along significant swelling. My wife will get stung and to her it’s nothing more that quick poke, similar to a needle stick.
I’m not a doctor, but there’s a significant difference between a heart attack and “a-fib” (atrial fibrillation). It’s like saying “I had a stroke (or ‘migraine’, as some call it)”.
I thought about velvet ants too. They’re rated as high as the T Hawk on the pain scale. But no wings in my mind equals not bee-like.
I was surprised to see the experts rate paper wasps as high as they do, since I’d often fooled with their nests as a child, but never got stung.
But the paper wasps the experts cite are specifically in the genusPolistes. So other wasps that make paper nests aren’t the same. (Maybe because the yj/bf types swarm in much larger numbers, they’re venom doesn’t need as big of a punch.) I’ve been stung by baldfaced hornets and yellow jackets, and it doesn’t seem like the intense pain people talk about with cowkillers or polistes wasps.
"I’m not a doctor, but there’s a significant difference between a heart attack and “a-fib” (atrial fibrillation). It’s like saying “I had a stroke (or ‘migraine’, a”
What is your definition of a heart attack?
The way I look at it in a heart attack the heart malfunctions and doesn’t beat right. When the heart goess a-fib it malfunctions and doesn’t beat right. Plainly you are not a doctor, but you think a similar comparison is stroke and headache?
Of course that a genuine doctor in the emergency room said to me both times, “you are having a heart attack” doesn’t enter into it, I guess. He just didn’t understand medical terminology as well as you.
Oddly stroke was one of the concerns when the heart was beating in a wildly arrythmic pattern.
The scariest thing to me was seeing blood pressure at appallingly low numbers.
Here’s a cardiologist who specifically addresses the question, and clearly says they are not the same thing: http://www.bannerhealth.com/Services/Health+And+Wellness/Ask+the+Expert/Heart+Care/_Is+Afib+a+form+of+heart+attack.htm
BTW, I was once admitted to the hospital with A-fib, and in my case no one ever mentioned or compared it to a heart attack.
I’ve also had migraines that have had stroke-like symptoms (confusion, partial loss of vision, tingling in hands and mouth on one side), so it’s not that ridiculous to compare them. Also, it’s a misconception that “migraines” are always headaches. They are neurological events that sometime occur with little or no headache.
In your case, however, is it possible that you had A-fib and a heart attack at the same time? Even though they’re different things, it wouldn’t surprise me if one could cause the other.