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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.
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