So, I was thinking last night that I really should tell you about some of the women that I met during my hospital stays and how they experienced their heart attacks- what very weird signs and symptoms that they felt.
And I promise to try to make this as short as possible.
So one women I met- in her early 50's at the time, said that she had a slight headache, but the weirdest thing was that she said her teeth felt like they wanted to fall out.
She was just about to get in the car to drive 5hrs when she suddenly collapsed and her friend called the ambulance.
Now even though she felt had no obvious and typical signs of a heart attack, something must have registered on the monitors because the Ambo officers picked it up right there and then.
Another lady in her late 50's said that she thought she had pulled a shoulder muscle while out gardening because the only pain she felt was in her shoulder blade, directly behind her heart, until she too suddenly collapsed with the cold sweats and feeling nauseous.
Another women said that she had no other signs or symptoms of anything, other than a really sore jawline- both top and bottom and she was in her early 60's.
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Even men can have unusual signs and symptoms compared to those that we mostly hear about.
And old friend said that he was just driving along feeling fine and then suddenly started feeling really sick, got the cold sweats and pulled up on the street- right behind an ambulance- which saved his life.
Even my dad- who I am not genetically related too, had a burst Mitral heart valve https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mitral-valve-prolapse/symptoms-causes/syc-20355446 for his 59th birthday and mum said that as they were laying in bed, she could hear his heart beating- thumping really, REALLY loud, but not fast and she asked him is he was ok and he said yes.
And then about 10 minutes later he said, no I don't feel so good and so Mum went to our next door neighbours house to get my uncle- who thankfully was an ambulance officer. (RIP Uncle Ron you champion you.❤️❤️❤️..)
She got in trouble for not calling 000, he got into trouble for driving dad to the ED in his own car, but this action saved my dads life. And it was Uncle Ron taught me everything he knew so I could become a St John Ambulance first aider where I spent 4 years when I was a teenager.
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So when I had my first heart attack, I was opening my back gate and had my head turned as I was talking to my friend and then I felt a 'ping' in my right shoulder just underneath my clavicle and it felt like a rubber band snapping with just the tiniest of throbbing pain and I thought that I had pulled a muscle.
The I went to bed and felt a line of numbing pain down my right arm and I thought crap, I've pinched a nerve instead.
The an hour or so later, laying in bed with that tiny throbbing pain in my shoulder, I swallowed and I realised that my throat was really sore- not the scratchy sore throat you get when you've got a cold, but it was more muscular sore- like I had been crying for hours. Then I realised that I had a tiny throbbing pain in my throat- the Carotid Artery.
And then the penny dropped and my St Johns first aid training came back to me (from the early 80's mind you...) and I said to my partner at the time, I think that I'm having a stroke, but if I am, it's a really weird one because it's on my right arm instead of my left.
So he took me to the hospital and for 3 days they kept saying no, you haven't had a heart attack- your heart has a had an event like a heart attack.?1?1?!..(go figure...) and then 3 days later, the Cardiologist came back and said actually you have had a heart attack and it was a pretty big one too because we found an increased level of Troponin from your blood tests - which really in the whole scheme of things was not so big cause it was only 175 instead of 16 and under.
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So for four years I walked around feeling like a time bomb and went from one cardiologist to the other- both public and private but none of them could work out why. Some of them said that it will never happen again. Some of them said that it was in my head. Some of them took my money, told me I was ok as they were seeing another patient at the same time....and only 1 of them said, well if it happened so suddenly the first time and we still don't know why, then you have every right to feel like a time bomb because it could very well happen again at any time....
I was seeing one public cardiologist every 6 months and even though I was trying to describe to him about the pain that I would feel and the irregular heartbeats, he always told me that I was fine. Then he left to work in the USA for a couple of years and soon after I had found the https://myheartsisters.org/about-women-and-heart-disease/ website with a story by a woman who described what I felt and it was like a moment of pure joy because finally I was not alone. Finally my pain was real. Both it and I had been validated and it was not in my head.
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Eventually I was sent another annual appt and when I called to confirm, they said that I could see ----- and I said hell no, not him, and then I stopped and thought hang on, he's been working in he USA for a couple of years which is where I got most of my good information from, so surely he would have learnt, spoken or indeed actually treated someone there with the same thing as me, so I decided to give him another chance.
I walked and and he immediately said, so what do you want this time? And I said same thing as last time, but this time I've done my research and I told him that I thought that maybe my original heart attack had been caused by MVD- Microvascular Disease- https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/angina-chest-pain/coronary-microvascular-disease-mvd and left me with Prinzmetals Angina. He scoffed at me and said ha they don't even exist and if they did, you are on the right medications for it. And that was it. Speechless, I was shown the door
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So fast forward to 2018 when I saw the girl at the cafe making my iced chocolate with Dairy milk instead of plant based milk and even knowing that dairy milk gives me really bad cysts in the groin and armpits (and I grew up in a diary farming town guzzling milk by the literal truckloads and getting cysts since I was 10yrs old......) I thought to myself, oh it's only 1 cup, it won't kill me....2 days later I was at the GP getting some heavy duty Penicillin for the cyst that had grown into a major abscess within 3 days and then that night, felt like I was getting the flu, with achey joints, sore muscles, bad headache, feverish and then the pain Angina pain started. So the next morning- Friday 16th March (my best mates birthday)...lol...woops..all the pains were all still there so I DRAGGED myself to hospital and went straight into Ed, where they said, nope, you are fine you can stay and get that cyst removed, until a couple of hours later another doc came along and said actually I've just cancelled the surgery, you are now in the middle of having a heart attack.
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So the weekend goes by, hooked up to monitors and a battery of tests, then Sunday morning I get a visit from an older German cardiologist and I tell him about my history and the theory of Prinzmetals (CAVS) and he can't believe it. How do I know about that and I'm like well, it is all over the internet- dozen of clinical trials, research papers and so on......
Then Monday morning rolls around and they roll me into have an Angiogram 
and they discover an artery that has narrowed so much that they decide to put a stent in it thinking that it was narrowed from a build up of plaque in side, then they gave me the GTN and it opened right back up.
The German Cardiologist turned to me and said, you know what we were talking about yesterday, I think you were right
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Left column of images are with arrows pointing to the constriction. Right column of images arrows pointing to the same spots without constriction.
So, the next 2 days I spent in a world of pain from the Angiogram, then I had surgery, got the abscess cut out and then the surgeon comes in the next day to have a look at it and says, yep it looks great so you can go home today and I'm like noooo... actually somethings wrong with my heart...and this is what was completely different about that.
The first 2 heart attacks felt fairly identical- pain up and down the right side tracking along the major arteries up my sternum, across my collarbone to the shoulder, down the arm, down the rib cage at my outer boob area and into the abdomen, as well as up my neck - 
But this one this day was completely different again cause it felt like someone squeezing my chest- right in the centre from sternum up to my throat. It was hard to breathe- even just laying in bed and even harder to talk to my Aunty on the phone....And I think that this is more of a typical text book scenario...Anyway, a few hours later, the doctor comes in and tells me that I am having another heart attack and this time the Troponin is at 5500+ and all this is happening whilst they've got me on an infusion of GTN- go figure....
So the next day rolls around and they say, yep you're all good, you can go home and again, I was like well actually.... nope cause it's all happening again- exactly as it was yesterday...And this time the Troponin hit somewhere above 7700+...
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So they kicked me out the next day and by the next night I was back in hospital again, but this time I decided to go to another hospital and what a huge difference.
Going from one hospital that I had been going to for 8yrs and banging my head against a wall while they were refusing to believe me at every step despite all of the empirical data and denying that these illnesses exist, then going to the next hospital to where they not only welcomed me with open arms by acknowledging that the illnesses existed, but where more than happy to help me find out what was going on. Now even the head nurse said that they had seen a few patients with CAVS before and mostly women, it was quite rare, but finally someone believed me! https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/angina/expert-answers/coronary-artery-spasm/faq-20058316
So now you know where my local is and it's not the pub anymore, it's St Vinnies hospital.
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And what I do want to point out, that none of the people that I mentioned above, including myself has any prior history, pre-existing conditions or any precursors to heart attacks such as Diabetes, obesity, drug use...well maybe me in my twenties party fun...Non of them, including myself were unfit or overweight. Some where smokers, some not. But all were the A-typical heart attack victims and ALL had A-typical Heart attack signs and symptoms.
So I cannot urge you enough to check those links, especially https://myheartsisters.org/about-women-and-heart-disease/heart-attack-sign/ and none of this is meant to scare you, it is meant to empower you to be prepared to become a participant in your own health and well being for your future, after all we fear the unknown, but can fix the known....
Oh yeah and so I know that I can't afford to get a virus of any kind because now I know that infections- bacterial and viral can trigger my Angina and even possibly kill me..yayy...
SOOOOO Sorry that it took so long- and this is even the abbreviated version believe it or not.....
