Enemy of Entropy

Female Heart Attacks Are Different: A Nurse’s Heart Attack Experience

8 March 2010, 8:30 am. No Comments. Filed under Health.

The fol­low­ing was posted to a mail­ing list I’m on. Of course, it was sur­rounded with the usual “send it to every­body you know!” admo­ni­tions. I don’t do that, and I usu­ally delete any­thing so marked. But I did find the infor­ma­tion use­ful, so (after edit­ing a bit, I admit), I am repost­ing it. I made no mate­r­ial changes, and take no credit for the infor­ma­tion therein. I’d be happy to give credit to the orig­i­nal author if I can find any cred­itable attribution.

I did, of course, check Snopes, where I found that this thing has been cir­cu­lat­ing since 2007 and orig­i­nally con­tained more specifics about the sender, such as the date of the heart attack and her job title. The one I received claimed that the author was an emer­gency room nurse, which isn’t, appar­ently, the case (or if it is, wasn’t the claim in ear­lier ver­sions of the mes­sage). Still, there was no author given, and the infor­ma­tion I’m repeat­ing here was ver­i­fied as cred­i­ble. It does, how­ever, point out that heart attacks aren’t really gen­der spe­cific. While women are a lit­tle more likely than men to have “atyp­i­cal” heart attack symp­toms, peo­ple of any gen­der can have any kind of symptoms.

Did you know that women rarely have the same dra­matic symp­toms that men have when expe­ri­enc­ing a heart attack (Myocar­dial Infarc­tion — MI)? …you know, the sud­den stab­bing pain in the chest, pain on the left arm, the cold sweat, grab­bing the chest, and drop­ping to the floor.

I had a heart attack at about 10:30 p.m. with NO prior exer­tion and NO prior emo­tional trauma that one would sus­pect might’ve brought it on.

I was sit­ting all snugly and warm on a cold evening, purring cat on my lap, read­ing an inter­est­ing story and actu­ally think­ing, A-​​A-​​h, this is the life. I was all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sen­sa­tion of indi­ges­tion, when you’ve been in a hurry, grabbed a bite of sand­wich and washed it down with a dash of water, then that hur­ried bite feels like you’ve swal­lowed a golf ball oh-​​so-​​slowly going down the esoph­a­gus — most uncom­fort­able! You real­ize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thor­oughly and this time drink a glass of water to has­ten its progress down to the stom­ach. This was my ini­tial sen­sa­tion — the only trou­ble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of any­thing since about 5 p.m.

After it seemed to sub­side, the next sen­sa­tion was like lit­tle squeez­ing motions that seemed to be rac­ing up my spine (hind­sight: it was prob­a­bly my aorta spas­ming), gain­ing speed as they con­tin­ued rac­ing up and under my ster­num (breast bone).

Then they con­tin­ued into my throat and branched out into both jaws. Aha! Now I stopped puz­zling out what was hap­pen­ing — we’ve all read and/​or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the sig­nals of an MI. I said aloud to my cat, “Dear God, I think I’m hav­ing a heart attack!”

I low­ered the footrest, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, “If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walk­ing into the next room where the phone is — on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know I need help, and if I wait I may not be able to get up at all.”

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed 911. I told the oper­a­tor I thought I was hav­ing a heart attack due to the pres­sure build­ing under my ster­num and radi­at­ing into my jaws. I wasn’t hys­ter­i­cal or afraid, just stated the facts calmly. She said she will send the para­medics over imme­di­ately, but to unbolt the door and lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I did as instructed and lost con­scious­ness. I don’t remem­ber the medics com­ing in, exam­in­ing me, lift­ing me onto a gur­ney, get­ting me into the ambu­lance nor hear­ing their call to St. Jude’s emer­gency room. I briefly awak­ened when we arrived and saw the car­di­ol­o­gist help­ing the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambu­lance and ask me ques­tions, but I couldn’t make my mind inter­pret what he was say­ing or form an answer. I nod­ded off again and didn’t wake up until the car­di­ol­o­gist and his part­ner had already threaded the angiogram bal­loon up into my heart where they installed stents to hold my right coro­nary artery open.

My think­ing and actions at home before call­ing 911 took about 4 – 5 min­utes, both the fire sta­tion and St. Jude are only min­utes away from my home, and my car­di­ol­o­gist was already on his way.

Why so much detail? Because I want all of you to know what I learned first hand:

  1. Be aware when some­thing very dif­fer­ent is hap­pen­ing in your body — not the usual men’s symp­toms — but things I couldn’t explain until my ster­num and jaws got into the act. Many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were hav­ing one. They com­monly mis­take it as indi­ges­tion, take Maalox or other anti-​​heartburn prepa­ra­tion and go to bed, hop­ing they’ll feel bet­ter in the morn­ing when they wake up … which doesn’t hap­pen. Your symp­toms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call 911 if any­thing unpleas­ant is hap­pen­ing that you’ve not felt before. It is bet­ter to have a “false alarm” than to risk your life guess­ing what it might be!

  2. Note that I said Call 911. Time is of the essence!
    • Do not try to drive your­self to the ER — you are a haz­ard to oth­ers on the road.

    • Do not have your pan­icked fam­ily speed­ing who — instead of focus­ing on the the road — are look­ing anx­iously at what’s hap­pen­ing with you.

    • Do not call your doc­tor — he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him any­way; and if it’s day­time, his assis­tants (or answer­ing ser­vice) will tell you to call 911. He doesn’t carry equip­ment in his car that you need to be saved! Para­medics do, prin­ci­pally oxy­gen that you need ASAP. Your doc­tor will be noti­fied later.

  3. After you call 911, take an aspirin if you can.

  4. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a nor­mal cho­les­terol count and have had no pre­vi­ous symp­toms. Research shows that an ele­vated cho­les­terol is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbe­liev­ably high and/​or accom­pa­nied by high blood pres­sure). MIs are usu­ally caused by long-​​term stress and inflam­ma­tion (from infec­tions) in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hor­mones into your sys­tem to sludge things up in there.

  5. Remem­ber that pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep!

Let’s be care­ful and be aware. The more we know, the bet­ter our chances of survival!

An Update Instead of a Book Review!

27 July 2009, 6:25 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Health.

Cur­rent Mood:Surprised emoticon Surprised

I looked back at my recent entries and real­ized that it’s been a really long time since I posted much of any­thing sub­stan­tive. I’m com­ing out of a long period of being nearly zom­biefied thanks to one of my med­ica­tions. I didn’t real­ize that was hap­pen­ing, as I’d been on that drug for years with­out that prob­lem. Appar­ently, the prob­lem was a com­bi­na­tion of my dosage being increased last fall and inter­ac­tion with other meds. Unfor­tu­nately, I found this out because of an irre­spon­si­ble doc­tor who refused to see me as sched­uled when I was due for refills, and wouldn’t give me refills with­out see­ing me. Crash­ing off the max­i­mum dose caused insom­nia and seizures.

Yes, seizures. Some­thing I have never expe­ri­enced before, and I really didn’t need to add yet another square to my per­sonal Symp­toms Bingo Card. I fell right out of the bed dur­ing one bad seizure last week. We have a captain’s bed designed for a water mat­tress, but have a reg­u­lar mat­tress and box springs on top, so the whole thing is much higher than most beds. I have to use a step­stool to get in and out of bed. So falling out was much more painful than falling out of most beds. Hit­ting my fore­heard on the wheel­chair and whacked my chin but good on the lapdesk didn’t help. I have no idea what I hit with my right fore­arm, but it still looks like a per­son bit me. My left arm has funky bruis­ing and a cut, both knees are bruised and car­pet burned, and my torso is also bruised and sore. Lots of fun! Now my chin is actu­ally black, mak­ing me want to wash my face every time I see a mir­ror. I’ve never been able to feel the swelling in a bruise as dis­tinctly as this one, either.

I’ve seen a new doc­tor, who switched me to a bet­ter med­ica­tion. It’s help­ing to slow down the seizures, but I’m still hav­ing some. I’m still sleep­ing a lot less than I was, which is good. What isn’t good is that I’m hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing well, period. Hope­fully that will go away soon.

Social Secu­rity is still mess­ing around with my case and hasn’t paid out a dime yet, or sent me a Medicare card. If you ever have trou­ble with the SSA, don’t even bother try­ing to find any­one to take respon­si­bil­ity for straight­en­ing any­thing out. Just go straight to your Sen­a­tor or Representative’s office. I’d been try­ing to get a straight answer from some­body, any­body, in the whole orga­ni­za­tion for about a month with­out luck. Less than 48 hours after con­tact­ing a Senator’s office, I got a mes­sage that my file is at the Bal­ti­more pay­ment office, that they have all the infor­ma­tion they need to pay out the claim, and that we should see money very soon now.

I was really hop­ing to get the Medicare thing started in time to maybe have a pow­ered mobil­ity device before Dragon Con, which would let me go and enjoy the con for the first time in years. The last time I went, we rented a scooter, so if the money comes through before the con I sup­pose we might try that again.

In more fun news, we fin­ished watch­ing Torch­wood: Chil­dren of Earth last night. Talk about depress­ing! Gwen and Rhys were the only ones who came out of that as heroes. And now I read that there’s going to be a fourth sea­son? Who the heck will be in it?

I’ve slowed down on read­ing books, par­tially because I can actu­ally do some other things for a change. The house is slowly improv­ing! I’m hop­ing we can even enter­tain again before long.

I haven’t been keep­ing up with most people’s Live­Jour­nals or any­thing else, so if there’s some­thing I should have seen, I’d appre­ci­ate a poke in the com­ments here.

Linky Linky

9 February 2009, 12:39 am. 1 Comment. Filed under News.

Cur­rent Mood:Angry emoticon Angry

You know all those sto­ries and wor­ries about immu­niza­tions con­tribut­ing to autism? For­get them. The doc­tor who wrote the study that started the scare back in 1998 has been charged with “fix­ing” the data. What’s more, the “study” only involved twelve patients!

The sec­ond story is a very good arti­cle about how the obe­sity scare is just lead­ing to more health prob­lems, espe­cially for young girls.

Europeans Continue Coming to Their Senses

19 April 2008, 8:24 am. Comments Off. Filed under Health, Size Acceptance.

About mod­els and the effects of the media on body image in their pop­u­la­tions, at least. Fol­low­ing Spain’s move last year that banned ultra-​​thin mod­els from cat­walks, France is act­ing. The “French parliament’s lower house adopted a ground­break­ing bill Tues­day that would make it ille­gal for any­one — includ­ing fash­ion mag­a­zines, adver­tis­ers and Web sites — to pub­licly incite extreme thinness.”

British researchers are also rec­om­mend­ing action. “With con­stant images of stick-​​thin, size-​​zero mod­els, tiny-​​waisted pop princesses and actresses is putting young girls’ health at risk and fuel­ing the rise in eat­ing dis­or­ders, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Janet Trea­sure of the Eat­ing Dis­or­ders Research Unit at Kings Col­lege London.”

It’s a relief to know that, some­where in the world, peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to this stuff. It’s tire­some to hear the con­stant folderol about the “obe­sity epi­demic” here in the U.S., with almost no bal­anc­ing coverage.

Steroids for FMS/​CFS/​ME?

22 March 2008, 11:28 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Health.

Today’s post is at Fibrant Liv­ing.

 

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