Serious Bidness, those heart attacks...

[Hubert Flottz]

The pain is very BAD! It started hurting in back of my neck and the pain then went out the collarbones and down both arms. Then my jaw bones started hurting and in a few minute's time, all my teeth were even hurting. The sweat was pouring off me, but I felt cold. The pain was really bad, but it was like a toothache all over, instead of sharp pain. The ache was in the chest also and up the breast bone, after a minute or two and it got worse and worse there. It felt like extreme pressure, or like a great weight was pressing down on my chest. It was about 45 minutes from the onset of the thing, until I arrived at the hospital, because the ambulance got stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate. I knew without a doubt, what was happening to me, about a minute after it started, so I took two aspirins and I placed a nitro pill under my tongue.

After they got me to the ER, they were running with me everywhere they took me in the hospital. They gave me shots and started an IV, but the pain was still very bad. They took me in to the cardiac catheterization room and I was wide awake and still in real bad pain. The doc was talking to me and the nurses kept asking me how bad the pain was and I kept saying about an eleven on a scale of 1 to 10! The doctor was telling me when he'd remove a blood clot from one of the two arteries that were blocked off. Each time he'd say he'd gotten one out I'd feel the pain ease up some. He was able to clear one artery and to place a stint(sp)in it, after he'd placed the stint the pain stopped. The one artery he was not able to open back up, so I had quite a bit of heart muscle damage. Both the arteries that blocked up that day were old grafts, from a bypass operation I'd had six years before the "massive" heart attack that day.

Almost a year later I started having some chest pain again and the doctor set me up for another heart cath. After the doctor started the thing, he found that he could open up the artery that had remained blocked the day I'd had the heart attack the year before. He then placed a stint in that artery and was able to open it all the way back up. They had told me after the heart attack, that I had lost 50% of my heart muscle, but after they placed the last stint, they estimated that I now have 75% of my heart muscle still working. I have had very little chest pain since they fixed me up last time. The doc told me I'll probably need another stint sometime this year, because the artery they opened the day I had the heart attack is now 50% blocked again. They told me that if I have another "Bad" heart attack and survive it, I'll need a pacemaker. I hope it's a damned Dick Cheney, VIP Model, V8, with a 5 speed tranny and overdrive!

If you suspect you're having a heart attack, GET HELP FAST! Start popping nitro pills, if you have them, to expand the blood vessels and some aspirin to thin the blood. If three nitro pills don't stop the pain get to the hospital ASAP. If after popping the nitro three times the pain persists...you may keep on popping your nitro pills every 5 minutes. If the guys on the meat wagon say you can't have but three nitro pills of three puffs off the inhaler, they are wrong. You can keep up the nitro until they get you on the nitro IV at the hospital, as long as you wait 5 minutes between doses. The reason I'm telling you this, is because the guys who hauled me to the ER wouldn't give me anymore Nitro after they had given me three doses, so then the pain became unbearable for the second half of my 30 minute ride. Afterwards the doctor told me, that the guys on the ambulance were wrong and that they could have given me a dose every 5 minutes all the way to the hospital. The nitro eases the pain some, for a couple of minutes between the doses, but if it's a heart attack the pain will come right back.

I was posting this to madokie's thread, but I see that it was locked, because of incorrect information. My doctor told me that not everyone develops the same type pain, or symptoms, when they have a heart attack. Also, that if I have another one, that I may have different symptoms the next time. I had felt the same type of pain in the chest and neck before the day I had the massive heart attack, but it was never as severe and it had never lasted past the second dose of nitro before. If you think you are having a heart attack get help ASAP. Some folks don't survive the first one! I WAS LUCKY!!!!

I went ahead posted this, because we could all use any GOOD INFORMATION on heart attacks, that we can get, myself included. If you have any good information to add, I'd love to hear it.

[babylonsister]

1. You've just done us a public service, and I'm glad you are

here to do it! Thank you! :hug:

[Hubert Flottz]

5. I'm just glad to be anywhere!

I really thought I was a goner that day, but I never did panic. I think the guys hauling me were scared more than me. I think that my telling myself over and over to "STAY CALM" might have helped save my life. When your doctors and nurses keep telling you for a couple of days afterward how lucky you were to make it, you haven't much choice, but to believe it.

I think hugs helped get me well...

[WePurrsevere]

2. Thank you! My DH & I are going to take CPR again since it's been years....

since we last took it (I was still a nurse and he was a paramedic). When it comes to your life or the life of a loved one you can never have enough knowledge.

This part in particular I want to emphasize: "My doctor told me that not everyone develops the same type pain, or symptoms, when they have a heart attack. Also, that if I have another one, that I may have different symptoms the next time."

Thank you again... I'm so pleased that you posted this and even more so that you're HERE and able to post it. :)

[pecwae]

3. Thank you for being here to tell your story.

Relating your experience could save someone's life.

Women should be reminded that we often present different symptoms during heart attack than men. Serious pain anywhere needs to be evaluated.

[DemonFighterLives]

4. You deserve the cadillac pacemaker if it ever comes to that

Hope you are well! Take some good walks and stop to smell the roses, of course with doctors approval.
:pals:

[Hubert Flottz]

6. "stop to smell the roses"

I have straightened up and flown right, since the day I had the heart attack. I think I'll be here to smell the sweet roses again this spring and I'll be thankful!

You DUers helped me through that thing, more than you'll ever know...

[Coexist]

7. thank you so much for this

my dad had a couple of heart attacks - and then triple bypass surgery.

Seeing him like that - I made some MAJOR changes to my own life. Scary stuff.

Be well.

[hyphenate]

8. As someone who has been through it as well

There is just no other way to state it! However, I can add a few things as well.

I'm female, and my first heart attack was when I was 43. I'd already had an angioplasty at that time, with two stents. The heart attack came three months later (the first time around, it had been a serious case of angina which brought me to the cardiologist) and I had taken three nitro tablets, and the pain was still there. I did something unforgivable: I drove myself to the hospital. I made it fine, but when you "pop" into the emergency room without paramedics, they don't take you as seriously. As I was going in, I asked a nurse for directions, and she told me to calm down, that I was hyperventilating. I had to get into the ER bed on my own, and I was left alone without any help for a very long time. I went through the stages of superpain, cyanosis and all before they finally gave me a shot of morphine, and the cardiologist came to tell me that I had, indeed, had a heart attack.

Six months later, it was all to be repeated. One day, after taking a full 20 nitro over the course of the day, I finally, at 2 a.m., went to the ER. There, the asshole doctor gave me a shot of ativan--a tranq--and sent me home. Two weeks later, it happened again, and I drove a little further to go to another hospital from where the idiot tried to tell me it was not a heart attack, that it was an anxiety attack. They kept me, and the next night I had either another heart attack or the worst attack of angina ever, and when I was finally sent to get an angioplasty, they showed that there was significant damage to the heart muscle.

My pain during the heart attack was more typical than most women go through. I had a sore jaw, pain up and down my left arm, pain almost smack dab in the middle of my chest (some people say it feels like an elephant sitting on them, but from my own experience, it felt more like the movie Alien, where the creature broke out of John Hurt from the inside) and hyperentilating. Many women only feel "sick" without many other specifics, like my mom had. She ended up having a quadruple bypass. There is really far less information on women and heart disease than for men, but it is the leading cause of deaths in women, even far worse than any of the cancers. Women fear cancer often without just cause when they should be having their cholesterol tested for heart disease, and looking into their family roots to see how much of a part heart disease played in their family. I know for example, that my biological mother did have angina attacks while she was in her 40s, but I also knew that she smoked, was an alcoholic, and drank 20 cups of coffee a day. My own problems were inherited high cholesterol, inherited gene for Type II diabetes, being overweight and a sedentary lifestyle. I thought since I didn't smoke, drink or like coffee, I was safe. Yeah, right.

Women will often shrug off the milder symptoms they get from a first heart attack, but because they do, their next attack is far worse, and their chances of survival go down exponentially. If your cholesterol is high, make a point to talk with your doctor about anything that might be happening. Mine was over 300 just 4 months before the first angina attack. If doctors treated women as aggressively as they treat men for chest discomfort, pain or sometimes vague symptoms, women would be able to be better served for heart attacks.

You are right--this is a serious matter, and too many people ignore the signs and the symptoms, and will end up in worse condition as a result, or might even die before they get to a hospital.

[Kailassa]

12. That is so terrible I'd have trouble believing it, if I'd not seen it too.

Too many doctors seem to believe that any middle aged woman they see is just neurotic and looking for attention. They seem to have a pathological fear of menopause and project it onto every woman they meet, thinking it makes women batty and explaines every symptom imaginable.

I had trouble for years with gallstones, but couldn't get ER treatment because some fool doctor had scrawled over the top of my chart in red texta, "rides bicycle to casualty." - Which I did as I had no other way to get there. One visit my daughter came with me, riding also, and a doctor told her I'd be lying on the floor screaming if I had gallstones, not pedalling a bicycle. "My mother could ride that bike to her own funeral!" my angry daughter told him.

Finally I got lucky. A brilliant surgeon was referred to me for massage treatment, and I explained I couldn't treat him till someone took my gallbladder out. So he not only took it out, just one week later, but saved the stones and showed them to the idiot doctors in casualty who had treated me so ignorantly. ;-)

[hyphenate]

23. That's great! I bet those docs felt like hiding in a closet

after that!

What was even more interesting for me was the thing that happened afterward. In California where we were both living at the time, they were shaking up the HMOs for Medicare, and they were assigning new doctors to different groups. And who should my mother get stuck with? The same asshole who said I was having an enxiety attack! I told her she would NEVER go to see him because I wouldn't let her. She finally straightened it out and was able to get her old doctor back. Not that he was a whole helluva lot better, but at least she liked him.

Right now, back home in Massachusetts, I'm going to a Teaching hospital. It's the largest one in the state, and it's a good place to go. They are eager to teach the interns and residents, so tests are frequently done to use as a diagnostic tool, so those things are not ignored. The only problem I've had so far is a couple of the residents know diddly about some aspects of care, and a few have been rather arrogant. But overall, I find I am taken care of better than anytime in the past. My new cardiologist is great and he actually listens to me.

Women also have to learn to speak up for themselves. I've known patients who go in and don't ask questions, who sit like lumps on a log, and barely do anything other than to say, "yes, doctor" or "no, doctor." Perhaps some doctors might cringe, but I need and want to be involved, and make a point to show I'm not blindly following directions without any understanding of what is going on. I only wish more patients would be like that.

[pitohui]

26. and not just middle-aged women

i'm afraid my mom was firmly in the senior citizen category and the doctors brushed her off for months w. a prescription for anti-depressants, which she quit taking after a couple weeks because they did nothing but kill her ability to eat on top of the other symptoms

when she was finally rushed in by ambulance, she was in such bad shape she needed a quadruple bypass

i could understand them screwing up a woman of 45 and assuming no heart disease is possible for the pre-menopausal woman but 65?

[Hubert Flottz]

18. My first heart problem came to light at 48 years of age...

I had several of the classic symptoms, the angina, the shortness of breath, the muscle cramps and so on. I went in for a stress test after my family doctor noticed an aberration on my ekg. The stress test showed an abnormal shortage of circulation in part of my heart. So then they sent me to cardiac catheterization, where they found that I had an artery being squeezed off each time my heart beat. They told me that in one's forties, was when this type of abnormality usually makes itself known, because as we age the arteries become hardened,(atherosclerosis)making the condition worse. I also had two other "60% blockages" that they said they wanted to fix while they were in there tinkering around.

At first I said NO! Then I thought about it, after I'd talked to a couple of other doctors and I finally agreed to have it done. The heart operation went great, but while they were working on me either a clot, or a small fragment of plaque, went to my brain and caused a stroke. When I woke up and came out from under the pain meds, I found that my left hand was numb and that my hand wouldn't work right. My left leg was messed up too, "badly weakened" they called it after tests at physical therapy. I kept doing all the exercises the people at rehab showed me, until after about a year I recovered most of the movement in my hand, but my fingers are still numb to this day. So if I ever tell you I've got a half a mind to do something, I ain't lyin'!

Still, even after the complications, if I had it to do over again, I'd do it. Coronary artery disease, is not really common on either side of my family. Cancer is the big killer on both sides of my family. The type of birth defect they said I had was pretty common. I wish I'd known abut my "Achy Breaky Heart" when I was 19, because I might have skipped out on the Army, like the sickly, lame and lazy, GOPers do!

[Kailassa]

9. Womens' symptoms are often different to mens'.

Be aware that the symptoms for women having a heart attack are often different from those of a man, but any of the following symptoms can occur in men and women:

Classic Symptoms

Squeezing chest pain or pressure
Shortness of breath
Sweating
Tightness in chest
Pain spreading to shoulders, neck or arm
Feeling of heartburn or indigestion with or without nausea and vomiting
Sudden dizziness or brief loss of consciousness

Symptoms More Likely in Women

Indigestion or gas-like pain
Dizziness, nausea or vomiting
Unexplained weakness, fatigue
Discomfort/pain between shoulder blades
Recurring chest discomfort
Sense of impending doom

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=19561

It's important for us women to know this, because, all to often, the doctors don't.
When I have heart trouble I get a pain in the back and my chest just feels odd. Few doctors will interpret that as a heart attack.

[pitohui]

27. it can go the other way too

oddly enough my dad had these symptoms from the women's list -- Dizziness, nausea or vomiting
Unexplained weakness, fatigue

he thought he had a reaction to his flu shot or the flu itself

i think we need to be familiar w. both lists, just in case, even if a man reacting the woman's way is not too common

[AndyA]

10. Thanks for the information - and I'm glad you're OK!

I guess sometimes it takes something huge to make us realize how important each day truly is. With the hustle and bustle of daily life, it's easy to forget the important things.

This is good advice for everyone, and I wish you the very best going forward.

[China_cat]

11. And the symptoms for women very often wouldn't even

be recognized as such in a man.

[Kailassa]

13. huh?

If a man had the symptoms women get, they would not be recognised as womens' symptoms?

Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

[China_cat]

17. No, not completely

The symptoms for a heart attack in a woman are most often SO different from the symptoms of a heart attack in a man that they are dismissed as 'hysteria', 'hypochondria' and 65 other things. If a man presented with the same symptoms that a woman would when having a heart attack, it would not be recognized as such.

[Mnemosyne]

14. Jeez Hub, I'm so glad you are here to tell this tale!

DU would not be the same without you! Nor would the world!

Great thread, btw. So glad to see the info on the differences in women's symptoms from men's being listed. My Nana had several silent heart attacks, no one knew until they did an EKG. My great-aunt, the same exact thing!

Stay well and take great care, please!:hug:

[Hubert Flottz]

19. I've had several folks tell me they discovered that they'd had

heart attacks long after the fact.

The EKG is what alerted me to start with too. Preventive health care SAVES LIVES, and I don't give a damned what the GOPers say! Older folks need to get check-ups often.

[Mnemosyne]

35. I have reached the conclusion that the GOP want the elderly,

the ill and disabled to die. Plain and simple. It's the only explanation for the cuts being made and medicare plan D. It's affecting me in terrible ways too and I'm fighting with them, but can only fight so much with little energy left.

What a world Hub, what a world.:(

I'm just so glad you are doing alright now!:hug:

[bigwillq]

15. Wow.

What an incredible story. Thanks for sharing. I wish you luck with your health. :hi:

[JitterbugPerfume]

16. thank you Hubert

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((HUG)))))))))))))))))))) take care of yer own self, OK?


thats some scary stuff

[Hubert Flottz]

20. Thanks for the hug and the kind words JitterbugPerfume

It's GREAT to see you posting again, I missed you!

Hope everything has been going well for you!

[JitterbugPerfume]

22. Thank you

:loveya:

[DeepModem Mom]

21. K&R. Thanks, and best to you, HF!

[Hubert Flottz]

30. TY DeepModem Mom

[madokie]

24. I guess I must be well on my way to being tombstoned

sorry to hear that you had the heart attack but real glad you made it ok. I'm sure it gives you a new sense of appreciation. I had read the information on several occasions in the past and thought I was doing a service in sharing it. My bad.

[Hubert Flottz]

28. You did okay madokie!

I posted this after I saw that your thread got zapped, kind of in honor of your thread. You gave me the idea and I was going to post on your thread, but couldn't because it had been locked. I'm sorry you're upset and I hope you're not mad at me...

[madokie]

31. I'm not upset just hurt that I would pass on bad info

I like the fact that when I post and make a mistake someone will set me straight. To have learned something this serious makes me feel good, just you know a little sad. I would hate that I would cause someone harm. Peace

[pitohui]

25. my god, stay well my friend

i think all medical advice threads are locked so i will just rush in to point out that you can have a heart attack and not know it, my dad thought he had the flu until 2 weeks passed and he never got well, it is strange to think it, but some v. strong people actually only have nausea rather than the terrible pain as a symptom, and it was a bad one all right, he had to have emergency bypass surgery when he finally went in

he's fine now

in the end, if in doubt, you need a medical opinion because it's too easy to confuse some kinds of heart attacks w. other less urgent illnesses

[Hubert Flottz]

29. You are exactly right!

If you have chest pain it's best to go get yourself checked out ASAP.

[Pathwalker]

32. I just had a carotid ultrasound, and I'm scheduled for

a stress test next week. I would have had it today, but there was mass confusion over whether or not I could have the injection to raise my blood pressure. It's contraindicated for me, but the scheduling nurse "couldn't see the problem" with me having it anyway. Apparently, I'm in "grave danger of a stroke or heart attack", according to my doctor, but the cardiology department reshceduled me for the test without the injection - next week.. Unfortunately, I don't have the nitro or aspirin, so I'm just trying to "chill" in the meantime, per their instructions.

I'm glad you're doing better Herbert.

[Hubert Flottz]

33. Yes you'd probably better chill.

Sounds like they're testing you with some REAL stress! Making you worry about the thing. I had to wait a month from the time I found out I needed a bypass until I went in to have it done and the wait was very stressful. I felt like I was on death row of something, sitting at home waiting and dreading.

I hope your test comes out okay! Let us know how it's going.

[Pathwalker]

34. I will do my best to chill, but it's not my strong suit.

I've already flunked the MRI on the brain - that's what made them schedule the extra tests. Unfortunately, heart disease runs deep and wide in my family - one aunt carried her nitro everywhere, and we were trained to put one one her tongue whenever she would have chest pains. She died with the open bottle in her hand.
Between the ambulance ride, and the rest of it, it sounds like you went through some major stress too. I have taken your words to heart ;-) and will try to remain calm. Thank you for the advice - it's good to know it's NOT the end of my world, and that there's still a lot of hope for me, yet. Your perspective is quite helpful, thanks.