I went to the Emergency
Room on Monday because I had been experiencing chest pains since the previous
Wednesday and thought I was having a heart attack. It’s a strange feeling, wondering if you’re
going to fall over dead in an instant. It’s no fun. In fact, it’s downright frightening.
The ER got me in right
away and started blood work, an EKG and a chest x-ray. Thankfully, all of my tests came back
negative. There had been no damage to my
heart, no sign of blood clots and all of my levels were good. The prognosis ended up being a guess that the
discomfort I had been experiencing was muscular/skeletal.
Whew! I can’t tell you how relieved I was and am.
Heart attack in women
manifests itself differently than in men.
According to WebMD,
these are the six most common heart attack symptoms in women:
1.Chest pain or discomfort. Chest pain is the most common heart attack
symptom, but some women may experience it differently than men. It may feel
like a squeezing or fullness, and the pain can be anywhere in the chest, not
just on the left side. It's usually "truly uncomfortable" during a
heart attack, says cardiologist Rita Redberg, MD, director of Women’s
Cardiovascular Services at the University of California, San Francisco.
"It feels like a vise being tightened."
2.Pain in your arm(s), back, neck, or jaw. This type of pain is more
common in women than in men. It may confuse women who expect their pain to be
focused on their chest and left arm, not their back or jaw. The pain can be
gradual or sudden, and it may wax and wane before becoming intense. If you're
asleep, it may wake you up. You should report any "not typical or
unexplained" symptoms in any part of your body above your waist to your
doctor or other health care provider, says cardiologist C. Noel Bairey Merz,
MD, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center in Los Angeles.
3.Stomach pain. Sometimes people mistake stomach pain that signals a
heart attack with heartburn, the flu, or a stomach ulcer. Other times, women
experience severe abdominal pressure that feels like an elephant sitting on
your stomach, says cardiologist Nieca Goldberg, MD, medical director of the
Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health at NYU Langone Medical Center in New
York.
4.Shortness of breath, nausea, or lightheadedness. If you're having
trouble breathing for no apparent reason, you could be having a heart attack,
especially if you're also having one or more other symptoms. "It can feel
like you have run a marathon, but you didn't make a move," Goldberg says.
5.Sweating. Breaking out in a nervous, cold sweat is common among
women who are having a heart attack. It will feel more like stress-related
sweating than perspiration from exercising or spending time outside in the
heat. "Get it checked out" if you don't typically sweat like that and
there is no other reason for it, such as heat or hot flashes, Bairey Merz says.
6.Fatigue. Some women who have heart attacks feel extremely tired,
even if they've been sitting still for a while or haven't moved much.
"Patients often complain of a tiredness in the chest," Goldberg says.
"They say that they can't do simple activities, like walk to the
bathroom."
I had five of the six symptoms
listed above. The only one I didn’t
experience was stomach pain. So, if you have these symptoms, don’t freak out;
but get to your doctor or to a hospital as quickly as possible. I waited too long. If my problem had been my heart I might not
be here typing this right now. I was
stupid.
When my chest pains
started on Wednesday I felt instantly exhausted and I ended up taking a nap for
an hour. This happened every day. The pains would start and I would break out
in a sweat, get lightheaded and feel fatigued.
Each time, within about thirty minutes I would have to lay down and
would fall instantly asleep. If you are
experiencing this, get to a hospital and let them check your heart and make
sure you are not having a heart attack.
If I learned anything from talking to the doctors, it was that the
biggest mistake people (particularly women) make is waiting to seek medical attention.
No one wants to rush
off to the ER, and I was no different. I
kept telling myself the discomfort was probably caused by gas or that I
probably irritated something while working out.
I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing. Again, this is not intelligent thinking. If there is even the slightest possibility
that something could be wrong with your heart, it’s worth a trip to the
hospital.
Some might say I wasted
two hours of my life in the Emergency Room on Monday… but I don’t see it that
way. It was a learning experience and it
gave me new perspective on the life that I have…a life for which I am evermore
grateful.
It comes down to the
heart of the matter…and with matters of the heart…get help right away. ~
