Grandma was living with several sisters and brothers at the time in the house where they were raised. She told her sister, "I'm not feeling well this morning. I'm going to go ahead and get the laundry done so I can lay back down for a little while."
As my grandmother was hanging those damp clothes on the line, she suddenly had a massive heart attack. They said she was dead before she hit the ground.
She was 61 years old. The same age I am now.
My grandmother didn't know the signs of a woman's heart attack. She most likely knew the chest pain and shortness of breath a man experiences, but her heart attack wasn't like that. She didn't feel well. She may have been a little nauseous, or she may have been sweating for no reason. Her neck, jaw, or back may have hurt. She was overwhelmingly tired, as she told her sister this, but she didn't know that is a sign of a woman's heart attack.
Even if she had known these signs and symptoms, the doctors of the time would have dismissed them. It has only been in recent years that the medical profession has recognized that women and men have different signs and symptoms before they have a heart attack.
Recently I've been having some health problems and will go through all the heart tests soon. Hopefully the cardiologist is wrong and there's nothing really wrong with me other than my medicine needs to be adjusted or some other such simple fix, but these problems have got me to thinking that I should do a post about women's heart attacks.
Here are some heart attack signs and symptoms common to both men and women:
- Chest pain
- Shortness of breath
- Stomach pain
- Unexplained sweating
- Lightheaded
- Jaw pain
- Arm pain (especially the left arm)
- Discomfort between the shoulder blades
- Sense of impending doom
- Unusual fatigue
Please watch the following short video. It could save your life.
For more information about women's heart attacks and heart disease click HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment