And every day the pain in his back intensified whenever he climbed the stairs. But when he started experiencing the same sensations, he told his wife he needed to make an appointment to see the chiropractor. He knew the symptoms, what they looked like, what his patients told him they felt like. He witnessed people who had heart attacks nearly every day. The feeling that two fingers were squeezing the life out of his heart with every beat.

The stabbing pain in the center of his back whenever he walked up or down stairs.

Here, five heart attack survivors share their very different experiences - and what they wish they'd realized sooner.īill Schaffer realizes he should have known better. Sometimes it's just a little discomfort, or an ache.”įor the simplest takeaway, Wood says, think of any symptoms you feel this way: “If you have to google ‘chest pain’ or ‘chest discomfort,’ then probably you first need to call 911.” “The one uniform thing people say is the symptom that they had was very different from what they had felt previously. “The way to know is if you experience something you haven't felt before.” For those who've had heart problems previously, the advice often still applies. “Basically if you feel something in your back, chest, jaw or tooth that you haven't felt before, get it checked out,” she says. Wood admits that the medical literature describing telltale symptoms can contradict itself, and says the combination of misinformation and downright denial complicates matters. “So when people don't have that classic symptom that they've seen or heard about, they think, ‘Well, this must be something else.'' “People have this idea of the Hollywood heart attack, which is a man squeezing his chest, the feeling of the balloon about to burst,” says clinical cardiologist Malissa Wood, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Thing is, more than half of the people who have a heart attack don't recognize its symptoms. En español | More than 1 million Americans will suffer from a heart attack this year, and about 150,000 of them will die from it, according to the American Heart Association.

I die every day when im away fromyou