And What I Think About It...
In my email today, a lady wrote that she had attended a meeting a couple of days ago in a town some distance away. As she was driving home, she began to experience some unusual pain.
Here's her description: "I felt a fairly sharp pain under my right shoulder blade, then shortly I had pain in my left jaw and kinda up my neck followed by pain under my left shoulder blade. This was past being interesting, we had just talked about Women's Health and how heart attacks start."
She decided to stop at the emergency room in the next town, where they administered a nitroglycerine pill under her tongue that stopped the pain within an hour (as the muscles in the heart relaxed and began to let more blood through.)
She spent the night in the hospital and saw a cardiologist the next day. Tests revealed a partial blockage in a blood vessel on the front side of her heart. She has a procedure scheduled in two weeks to clear it.
After reading this story, I thought about my sister's father-in-law. an elderly man who lives alone. Several years ago, he realized that he was having unusual chest pain and called 911 in time to get emergency treatment before he had serious heart damage.
These are two stories about heart attacks with good endings because people recognized and acknowledged what was happening to them.
I reviewed the symptoms of a heart attack today, and I hope you will too. Here are two good articles:
- What is a Heart Attack? by the National Institute of Health
- Heart Attack, Stroke and Cardiac Arrest Warning Signs by the American Heart Association.
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