Originally Posted by
Rowan
One of the critical issues, of course, is that any suggestion of heart problems should involve an immediate trip to the ER or to call an ambulance.
I don't want the thread to suggest that people should ignore their chest pains. All too frequently, they do ignore the pain, thinking it might be something else.
There are several TV campaigns that have run over the past few years here that have urged people to not delay getting medical assistance... and that it's better to be safe and have a positive non-MI prognosis, than to be dead.
In the end, I now believe that my incident wasn't an MI, and that in itself is heart-warming, so to speak. But I wouldn't have had it any other way on the day -- it was straight off to hospital.
Hear, hear.
The rather persuasive wife of my graduate adviser saved his life when she physically forced him into the ambulance at the first signs of heart trouble. An emergency quadruple by-pass later and he is a new man. Well, that and the fact that he now exercises and no longer smokes those horrid cigars. (By the way, his wife was also a biochemist who spent several decades working on synthetic blood for emergency surgeries.)