Heart Attack Symptoms

Chapter Ten

While Preparing a Presentation

The day of June 16th 2003 seemed like any other. Not a day that I expected to endure heart attack symptoms. Yet that is what occurred.

I was helping my father prepare a presentation for a meeting he was having the next day. This presentation was an extremely important for him. I really wanted to get it right. We reviewed it repeatedly, checking it, editing it, and rewriting it. The tension was high, we were anxious we really wanted the presentation to inspire.

A queasy feeling that something just wasn't right began to overtake me. I wasn't feeling well, yet I couldn't describe just what was wrong. I figured that it must be the anxiety and tension of the moment. I ignored it.

I did what I always did when things got tense. I smoked another cigarette. That was the way I have been dealing with anxiety and pressure ever since I was a teenager. I smoked. I thought, considered and believed that I was relaxing.

The Pains Began - What it Really Feels Like

Then the pains began. I began feeling pressure in my chest and pain running down my left arm; it continued for several minutes and subsided.

That meant indigestion as far as I was concerned. That it could or might be angina or heart attack symptoms was the last thing that would have occured to me.

It was time for a cigarette and the bathroom. That is exactly what I did. That didn't help. I wondered why, and continued working on the presentation.

Again the pain began, pressure in the chest, a queasy feeling all over, I knew something was wrong. I just couldn't figure out what it might be. I thought I had figured it out. I was hungry. I went home and ate supper. That didn't give me any relief, so I smoked and went to the bathroom again. After all, it was only indigestion.

The pains continued this way on and off. The intensity and the length of each episode increased. I knew something was wrong. I just didn't know what it could or might be. After all I was only thirty seven, why should I suspect a heart attack. Heart attacks were for the elderly. I was young and invincible.

The Delay - I Was Risking My Life

Then the Heart attack symptoms increased, I didn't realize at the time how each moment that I was delaying going to the hospital I was risking my life.

Just the memory of it alone causes me to regret my ignorance in knowing how to live a heart healthy life.

Oh how I wish others can avoid the pains and the symptoms, by conquering it before it is too late, through proper diet, exercises, quitting smoking, and beginning to live a healthy lifestyle.

For me it is too late. You still have the chance

Continue to the next chapter. Chapter eleven My Heart attack