"I Was Only 40, So It Didn't Seem Right": People Who Had Heart Attacks Are Revealing The "Bizarre" Symptoms That Signaled Something Was Very, Very Wrong
While February is known for Valentine's Day and heart-shaped candies, it's also the same time when American Heart Month is observed, which is used to bring awareness to heart disease.
Heart disease is an overall term that includes several types of heart conditions, such as arrhythmias, strokes, heart valve problems, and heart attacks.
According to the CDC, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and most racial and ethnic groups in the US (and has been for over 100 years). The unfortunate news is that more than half (51%) of people in a 2023 Harris Poll survey that the American Heart Association conducted did not know this.
So, since bringing awareness is more important than ever, I thought it would be helpful to share the responses from older folks who answered the question: "How bad did your heart attack hurt? And how scared were you?" Here are their very detailed and vulnerable answers below:
1."I’m a woman, so my experience might be slightly different. I started having chest pain during exertion, but it would stop when I slowed down. I exercised, mowed the lawn with a push mower, etc., for a couple of weeks. Then, one day, I was cleaning my house, and the pain didn’t stop. When I went to bed that night, the pain started in my left arm, and that’s when we went to the ER. When they first asked my level of pain, I said around 7-7.5. About 20 minutes later (maybe less), I said the pain was around 9 and increasing. They gave me morphine at that point, and it went to work almost immediately."
"If you don’t mind me asking, what did the pain feel like? Pressure? Squeezing? Indigestion/gas? There are times when I have pain on the left side of my chest, and I don’t know whether it’s the pint of ice cream I just ate or a full-on cardiac arrest.
I’m 58, and my mother has had two open heart surgeries, so I’m especially vigilant."
"There was no squeezing. It was more like intense gas and pressure, and it was pretty much the entire chest area. It was a non-stemi [Non-ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction] heart attack, so it didn’t show up on the EKG. It was the circumflex artery, and even though it was 100% blocked, it managed to build its own 'bypass' so that part of the heart was still getting some blood flow, resulting in minimal damage to the heart itself.
The cardiologist put in a stent by going through an artery in the thigh area. I will admit I wasn’t the heart-healthiest person; I had high cholesterol and couldn’t take statins. I’m on a great cholesterol medicine now, although I still need to lose weight. I also have a family history of heart problems, except it’s just affected the men in my family."
2."Mine was 100% blockage cardiac arrest; they were prepping my wife for my death. At first, I thought it was indigestion, but then I realized something was seriously wrong. My wife drove me to the ER, and I gradually became really incoherent. I was terrified, but once I got to the hospital, it was like a scene from a TV hospital show: A dozen or more people working on me. I got calm and figured they wouldn't let me die; they did not. As for the pain, I have a high tolerance for pain, and the chest pain was the worst pain I've ever experienced."
3."I had a typical woman's heart attack at 58 with very little chest pain. Went to the doctor thinking I was stressing over a very busy time in my life. He wasn't concerned until he saw my EKG. I was annoyed more than scared since I was in the middle of planning a child's wedding. I had a triple bypass and was home 10 days later — just in time to host a wedding shower at my house."
4."I didn't even know I had one. They said it happened sometime between my electrocardiogram and an MRI I had months later. The cardiologist was really pressing me on when it happened. I still have no idea."
"How could they tell it had happened?"
"Labs such as troponin level and changes on EKG are evidence of a previous attack. Source: I am nurse."
5."I woke up suddenly at 1 a.m., my lower jaw hurt like fuck. I took two aspirin and then looked up if jaw pain was a symptom of a heart attack. Then, I woke up the wife and had her drive me to the hospital. I was pissed, not scared. The aftermath of triple bypass surgery was 100 times worse than the heart attack."
6."I was home alone on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on the sofa and reading. I started to think I might feel nauseated, and then I started to feel like it was something else. Next, I had a sharp, burning pain in the center of my chest and called 911. There was no question that something was very wrong. The dispatcher kept me on the line and was magnificent. I was able to get the front door unlocked (so they didn’t axe it), gather a few things (iPad, phone, wallet) in a bag, and put our two dogs in the guest room by the time the EMTs got there."
"The worst moment was in the ambulance in traffic. One of the machines started to make an alarming noise, and the guy working with me stopped and called up to the driver something like, 'Get there FAST.' He did.
There was a scramble in the ER, and they got me settled. Turned out to be a tiny heart attack that revealed end-stage coronary artery disease. Four days later, I had a quadruple bypass.
The worst pain of the whole ordeal came the morning after the surgery. In the night, I had a pulmonary embolism, so first thing the next day, I needed a CT scan — getting moved from the bed onto the plank for the test was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever been through. I was so bad that, when the test was over, I made a scene until they brought major painkillers before they tried to move me back.
But all of that was ten years ago — this month — and my excellent health since then has been more than worth it. Sometimes modern medicine is a genuine miracle."
7."My dad had atypical heart attacks. This means he doesn't experience pain. He said he felt like he had swallowed something, and it felt stuck on the way down. It's only because my sister was a cardiac intensive care nurse that she noticed his lack of color (i.e., lips, nail beds) and sweats that she picked up a cardiac event. NOT ALL HEART ATTACKS HURT."
"This is what my aortic aneurysm felt like."
8."I got a burning sensation between my shoulder blades along with extreme exhaustion."
"Are you female? It seems to me that women get these more vague symptoms. It's concerning as a woman who really hesitates to see a doctor for fear it's 'just my imagination' or worse, 'just gas.'"
"Male. These symptoms had been going on for a while until it got to the point where I obviously needed to get to the ER. They hooked me up to an ECG and said, 'Sir, you’re having a heart attack.' They did angioplasty and placed two stents."
9."Neither really hurt, but both were small events, mostly just a tightening in my chest, and breathing was difficult. I was both drunk and stoned for both, so that might have lessened any pain."
10."Mine hurt like a bitch, and I have a rather high tolerance for pain as I lived a sort of rough life that involved a lot of injuries. Scared? Not so much scared as concerned. It occurred right after the start of a degenerative disease my wife had. So, she was having her own issues. And at the time, after some heavy pain meds, she'd just gotten to sleep for the first time in a couple of days. And I desperately did not want to wake her."
"I kept telling myself to suck it up and shut up; she had it worse than me. But I was almost ready to tap out and wake her and call an ambulance when the pain subsided. So I did the typical guy thing and told myself, 'Fuck it,' and didn't tell her the next morning.
It was months later, when I was having a chest x-ray for a different issue, that my doctor looked at the x-rays. He pointed to scar tissue that had formed and asked me, 'So, when did you have that heart attack?' Crap, my wife was with me; it was one of her better days. She whacked me upside the head and demanded to know why I'd never said anything. What could I say? Just, 'I didn't want to worry you, Dear.'
If you're wondering about my being afraid of dying. That really isn't a thing for me. Not the dying. I worry about not being able to provide for and protect my family. My own death itself, I accepted long ago. I've almost died; I actually have had to have my heart restarted on a couple of other occasions in my life. So, I have no particular fear of my own death. Not in a hurry to die either."
11."I had a heart attack exactly a year ago (63M). I ran two miles that morning and biked a mile to work. I felt pressure in the middle of my chest but thought it might be indigestion. The pressure was annoying but not debilitating. It was only when I started to sweat that I decided to take a Lyft to the ER. After I walked in, there were 10 doctors swarming over me in about two minutes. I had a 95% blockage in my artery. They immediately inserted a stent. I was released two days later. Happily, there was no damage to my heart. The hospital bill before applying insurance was about $130k."
"I'm always curious about the heart attack incidence among active people. It's also unsettling that the heart can fail with no warning (e.g., good blood pressure, sounds good, responds and recovers to exercise, etc.) Did you have high blood pressure? Anything that was concerning on a previous doctor's visit?"
"I’m evidence that it’s tough to beat heredity. I’ve been running for 41 years, don’t drink, and never smoked — but coronary disease runs on both sides of my family. My dad had his first heart attack at age 38, and my maternal grandfather died of a heart attack at 46. My blood pressure runs high, and I’m much more serious about taking my medication since my heart attack. My overall cholesterol isn’t bad, but my body doesn’t make a high level of 'good' cholesterol, which is genetic. I’m convinced, however, that exercise was what prevented my heart attack from being a 'widow maker.'"
12."It wasn't the worst pain I've had, but it was an extremely different kind of pain. I thought I had hurt my arm, mowing the grass like a pulled muscle. But then the pain got worse and traveled into my shoulder and up through my neck and jaw. Soon, I got very dizzy, cold, and sweaty, so I knew something was not right. Short of breath, then massive pain in my chest, tightness, difficulty breathing, etc. I was only 40, so it didn't seem right, and yes, I was scared. I've had gout twice since then, and both times hurt worse than the heart attack."
13."I felt kind of a dull pain in the center of my chest, more concerned about rapid heartbeat. Called 911 and watched Jeopardy till EMTs arrived. No big deal. The quadruple bypass, however, that was a big deal."
14."I was 63. My brother, the cardiologist's friend from medical school, became my cardiologist when I moved back to Montreal from France, having lived there for a few years. My family has a history of heart attacks around the age of 60. (Uncle, 58; grandpa, 60; pops, 64 (heart attack in the presence of my brother, the heart surgeon, three blocks from the hospital, survived seven years post-op). I had angina and was using nitro from time to time."
"So he told me that if anything unusual happened with or without pain, 'get thee to the hospital.'
I was working a late afternoon shift — so I got up in the late morning, walked to the front door, and picked up the paper to read during breakfast. Arrived completely outta breath. Breathing became normal, so I walked to the front door and back again, arriving completely outta breath, WHICH WAS NOT NORMAL.
I took a taxi to the hospital. Bypass surgery (five arteries bypassed, a yard of scar down my leg harvesting vein for the raw materials, a nice stainless steel wire to sew up my sternum, and about two pounds of zippers to keep it all together.
Being a citizen of Canada, all it cost me was the cab fare. (Otherwise, it would been in the 100K range.) This was 18 years ago."
15."My arms hurt like I was lifting something very heavy. I had been moving furniture the day before. It all happened so fast; it didn't occur to me I could have died."
16."It wasn’t that painful, but my wife talked me into going to the urgent care, and the nurse hooked me up to an EKG, and I joked, was I going to make it? This woman looks at me and just shakes her head, 'No,' I was taken aback, to say the least."
17."My first widowmaker wasn't really all that painful, at least not in the way most people would expect. There wasn't any chest pain, arm pain, or any of the stuff they tell you heart attacks feel like; it was mostly a lot of pain in my wrists, like the kind I feel when I spend too much time wrangling a computer mouse, just somewhat worse. Around 4:00 a.m., unable to sleep, I finally decided to go to the emergency room to get it looked at."
"I wasn't particularly scared because I didn't know what was happening. And then for the others, I'd already survived one, so I wasn't really freaked out when it happened again (though the wrist pain thing only happened by itself the first time — the ones that followed were a bit more 'traditional.')
Kidney stones were worse, by far."
18."I had chest pain following my evening meal, so I thought it was indigestion. I had an uncomfortable night, then phoned the doctor in the morning and told the receptionist about the chest pain that wasn't responding to antacids. This got me an emergency appointment with the doctor. I walked down, and we tried Glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) spray. It didn't make any difference, so the doctor gave me a prescription for a stronger antacid but took a blood sample as well."
"Later that day, I had a phone call to say that I had had a heart attack and that they were expecting me in A&E. I spent five days in the cardiac ward, although by that time, I felt fine and just wanted to go home. I think they were sick of me as well and chucked me out a day or two early.
So, no sweats, no left arm pain, no sense of impending doom, just midline chest pain. I've been a first aider on and off since 1978. At no time did I think, 'This is a heart attack.' It was time to call an ambulance.
That was in 2006. I'm still here nearly twenty years later."
19."It didn't hurt at all. It was a weird feeling, to be sure — but no pain. I was in a taekwondo tournament when it started. Couldn't figure out why my heart rate was so high, along with my blood pressure (thanks, Fitbit!). Drove myself to the hospital, about 15 minutes away. Said the magic words ('chest pain'), and they immediately did the ECG and drew blood. Then, they stuck me in a room with a leaky faucet. They drew blood and did the ECG thing a couple more times and were about to send me home. The doctor finally came in and said I was having a heart attack. I kept wondering when they were going to do something about it. They gave me Nitro and the next day did a stent."
"Never did hurt. The gallbladder hurt more than the heart attack. Hell, my tattoo hurt more. To be fair — it wasn't a total blockage. It was 70-80% on the Widowmaker."
If you're a survivor, share your heart attack experiences in the comments below.
