Good info. I'm curious about the symptoms when a heart attack occurs; is it painful, or subtle? Were you aware you were having a heart attack, or thought it might be something else?
Actually, I did not have the heart attack until after I got to the hospital. I was unconscious at the time, so I felt nothing.
I called 911 because for a couple of days I had noticed that my speech did not sound correct to me. I live alone, so when I started to notice it, I would read stuff out loud, and I just did not sound right. I called after a couple of days of this because I thought I might be having, or about to have a stroke.
It turned out that for a number of reasons, my pulse-ox reading was extremely low. Normally, it is supposed to be above 90. The more above 90 the better, up to 100. It is basically a reading of the percentage of oxygen in your blood. That is one thing that is measured by the little device they attack to your finger whenever you are in the hospital. My pulse ox that day when I was admitted was 49......not good at all, and I was kind of goofy acting. One of the nurses that worked on me told me later she really thought I was a goner because they could not get my breathing going.....and they almost had to intubate me. Glad I did not have to go through that.
The heart attack came when they were having trouble getting me to breathe properly once I was laying down on the table. I passed out, and while they were trying to revive me, I had the heart attack. So......I was not aware of any of the normal signs like pain in the left arm or chest, dizziness, shortness of breath, etc.
When I did feel the chest pain was in the next few days, at least once or twice a day.......usually at night. I was having trouble with afib, and the pain was from my heart just trying to get back to normal rhythm. Luckily, I did not have another heart attack. I can tell you this.....just feeling that pain.....I never want to have another heart attack. I have had several painful injuries, including broken arms, ribs, and breaking my nose twice, and this was probably worse than all of those put together.
What started the whole problem was that fluid had built up in my chest (from a number of causes) and my lungs and heart were not functioning properly.
I was in the hospital for 2 weeks, and then in a rehab facility for 30 days. I was in rehab so long primarily because I live alone, and they wanted to make sure I could get by on my own.
All in all......I was very lucky.
