Notes from a first aid course in Milton Keynes: Heart Attacks and when you’re having one!

One thing that crops up in my first aid courses on a regular basis is heart attacks. According to the British Heart Foundation (website here) around 100,000 of us in Britain are admitted to hospital every year with symptoms of a heart attack. This equates to 280 people per day or one every 5 minutes. Needless to say, that’s a lot of people and something that has come out of my reading, and even from friends on Facebook in the last month, is that people don’t recognise the signs and symptoms and/or they don’t act quickly enough.

The most common signs of a heart attack are:

• sudden and persisting pain or discomfort in the chest that feels like pressure, tightness or squeezing
• the pain may spread to either arm, the neck, jaw, back or stomach
• you may also feel sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath.

Below is one woman’s account of a heart attack (the MI that she refers to is a Myocardial Infarction or a blockage of one of the coronary arteries), which I copied and pasted onto my Facebook status a couple of weeks ago and below that are the reactions I got from 2 of my friends. It makes for interesting reading and I hope you enjoy it (if enjoy is the right word) and more importantly, that it helps you in the future.

Here is a warning for all from an ER nurse who says, this is the best description of a woman having a heart attack that she has ever heard. Please read, pay attention, and SHARE……….

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I’ve ever read.

Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have … you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack.

I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, 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 and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is 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 5:00 p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening — we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, 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 or anywhere else… but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.

Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some 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. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, 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 husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road.

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 the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading 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 in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says if everyone who sees this post would Share or re-post, you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life.

*Please be a true friend and SHARE this article to all your friends, women & men too. Most men have female loved ones and could greatly benefit from know this information too!

Credit goes to the respective owner

Follow Us – Very Interesting

So that’s one account and it does suggest that men and women present differently. The British Heart Foundation, however, has this to say:

It’s a myth that women and men have different heart attack symptoms. Symptoms can vary from person to person, but there are no symptoms that are more common in women than in men.

One thing I do know though from a course I went on last year is that up to menopause production of oestrogen does protect women from heart attacks.

Here is one friend’s reaction to the above article and what happened to his colleague at work:

Ahh OK I’ve never heard that, first aid training doesn’t get into that detail. Also a guy at work was having multiple heart attacks for that MI reason, and he wasn’t on the floor either, thought it was indigestion,,so not sure this is a man/woman thing, rather the different reasons for a heart attack bring different symptoms, regardless of gender. He’d put up with pain and “indigestion” for hours, was persuaded to go to the hospital, and was immediately given a bed, fitted a stent, and in hospital for 2 weeks. So men and woman should take note of your warning.

And another reaction – this time from a friend who survived an MI: