Tag: heart attack symptoms

How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Female survivors answer that question

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 20 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Having a heart attack felt nothing like how I thought it would feel.   For one thing, unlike sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating and you stop breathing, during my heart attack (myocardial infarction), my heart continued beating, and I was walking, talking and conscious throughout despite horrific symptoms – so how could I possibly be having a heart attack?

Like most women, I’d never really thought about my heart – except maybe years ago when running up that killer Quadra Street hill with my running group. Yet we know that heart disease kills six times more women than breast cancer does each year (in fact, it kills more women than all forms of cancer combined).

Women need to know all the potential symptoms of a heart attack – and seek immediate medical help if these symptoms do hit.  So I asked some survivors to share their very first symptoms. Their heart attack stories may surprise you:
 Continue reading “How does it really feel to have a heart attack? Female survivors answer that question” →

Six lessons Emmi learned from her Hollywood Heart Attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Emmi S. Herman is the mother of three millennials and grandmother of two perfect grandchildren. As a doting grandmother myself, I can relate. I can especially relate to her because, like Emmi, I too survived what doctors call the “widow maker” heart attack (a misnomer that really needs fixing given how many women I know who have survived it. Physicians don’t, for example, call this serious cardiac event the “widower” maker, do they?)  Emmi is a children’s book author with expertise in early literacy skills. When not writing copy at her day job or at work on a memoir about her sister, she is in her car somewhere between New York and New Jersey.

Here’s how she describes the six important lessons she learned about having a heart attack.  Continue reading “Six lessons Emmi learned from her Hollywood Heart Attack” →

85% of hospital admissions for chest pain are NOT heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 31 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

“I was asleep and my symptoms woke me up. I had several simultaneous symptoms, but the first one seemed to be central chest pain. It wasn’t sharp or crushing or burning, more like a dull pressure. The pain radiated down my left arm and up into my neck and jaw. I had cold sweats, and I felt nauseated.”

Laura Haywood-Cory, age 41, heart attack, six stents

Researchers tell us that most of us already know that chest pain like Laura’s could be a symptom of what doctors call Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI – or heart attack) or Acute Coronary Syndrome (any condition brought on by sudden reduced blood flow to the heart muscle).  So it may not surprise you to learn that chest pain is the main reason that over 6 million people rush to the Emergency Departments of North American hospitals each year. These visits also represent a whopping 25% of all hospital admissions – yet 85% of these admissions do NOT turn out to be heart-related at all.  Continue reading “85% of hospital admissions for chest pain are NOT heart attack” →

Do NOT drive yourself to the E.R. in mid-heart attack!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I don’t know why this even needs saying, but apparently it does. People talking about heart patients with severe chest pain (or offering advice to heart patients with severe chest pain, or speaking onstage at Stanford University’s Medicine X conference showing this dreadful slide about heart patients with severe chest pain) must never – and I do mean NEVER – even hint that patients should drive themselves to hospital while experiencing “severe chest pain” unless you are “too dizzy to drive yourself”. 

REALITY UPDATE: I am posting this slide as a warning to others about giving bad advice, not to offer an opinion on hospitals that invest in patient communication tools, unless you are the hospital responsible for sending out that boneheaded text on the above slide.

Continue reading “Do NOT drive yourself to the E.R. in mid-heart attack!” →