Hello OP,
hope you’re being looked at and having all the checks done.
over the Easter weekend of 2019 DH and I painted the outside of the cottage we lived in. One day we had to take our teenagers into town to meet friends and it was one of those stress trips - traffic, kids, couldn’t find parking etc…I walked the kids to where they were walking their friends, and walking back to the car I felt awful, really hot, tight chest and breathless. It went off fairly quickly and I didn’t give it another thought.
over the next couple of days I kept getting a weird feeling in my throat, it felt like my glands were up, like a sore throat on the outside - very odd. Occasionally I got a feeling like something was pushing underneath my teeth. I gradually started needing to sit down more often, no specific reason, I just felt ‘better’ resting.
On Easter Sunday I painted the last coat on the front door, and was utterly wiped out. I had to ask DD to help me make dinner. I ate with DH then again felt not right and left him to clear up. We popped an episode of Luther on, and where resting had made me feel better, it didn’t seem to go off - this ‘off’ feeling. My chest did feel a little heavy, but not what I would call painful. At 10pm I went up to bed. I couldn’t physically lay down - again not because of pain, but I just couldn’t. I suddenly needed the loo, and had 2 episodes of violent diarrhoea. My arms felt very heavy, but I thought I would feel better if I read or something. I piled pillows up because I still couldn’t lie even reclined. DH came upstairs and it just came to me - I knew I was seriously ill.
We called an ambulance - it took what seemed like ages, we lived very rurally.
The paramedics were really blasé - all my obs were perfect and a 3-lead ecg didn’t show anything concerning. They asked me if I felt any different and I said just the same so they reluctantly did a 12-lead ecg. Which showed I was in the middle of having a massive inferior STEMI (common or garden fully blocked right coronary artery). Whizzed off to the nearest PPCI, clot blown, blood pressure tanked (did feel like I was dying at that point, was very calm and a bit resigned - more of a oh ffs than omg). Stent in and up to the cardiac high dependency unit. By that point I was joking with the nurses.
I went into unstable angina a couple of months later - they had found serious narrowing of the LAD, and they were waiting for me to be strong enough for a complicated angioplasty, which was done as an emergency. Another 3 stents and here I am.
I am an ex smoker, overweight, high bp and cholesterol. Like a pp, I am very nervy with sensations in my chest, the closest feeling is heartburn, but the cardiac feelings have this strange, detached from reality sense to them. But I have had worse hangovers, way worse periods and at no point was I in pain. I did have an elephant on the chest feeling when my bp tanked after the heart attack, but that was the most classic feeling I had throughout.
Putting it here in the hope it might help someone else. Personally I would not be calling 111 if I thought I was having a heart attack. I would want a paramedic with lots of drugs, kit and a defib.