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TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 week agoWait, it’s possible to have a heart attack for 5 days? I thought a heart attack means your heart stops and you pass out?
Reading these comments is exposing how little I really know how cardiology. This is what it feels like to be on the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve.
My heart actually did stop in the hospital… after the 2nd heart attack. I was asleep and had no clue until the nurse came in the room.
6AM, wake up, waiting on a stent, fiddling around on my phone. Nurse comes in.
“Were you asleep about an hour ago?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your heart stopped for 8 seconds.”
“Ummm… thank you? I don’t know how to respond to that.”
Wow. That’s amazing. And terrifying. I hope you’re doing better now.
It’s been a struggle. I got the stent, still having trouble with my heart just stopping randomly. 4 seconds here, 5 seconds there, always when I’m asleep. Docs say it’s not concerning unless it happens when I’m awake, so I have an implanted heart monitor that calls out on my phone if there’s a problem.
There were problems with my meds that made me pass out from low blood pressure. Scared the hell out of the docs one day when I hit 58/47 in their office.
“Honest, I assure you I HAVE blood pressure, I’m sitting here talking to you, right?”
“Yeah, we don’t know how you’re doing that!”
adhocfungus@midwest.social 1 week ago
A heart attack is a damaging lack of blood flow to the heart. This is very often caused by your heart beating wrong (or not at all) but can have many other causes. It’s also important to note that the heart largely does not receive oxygen from the blood inside it; it has its own set of blood vessels on the outside feeding it. Therefore you can have a heart attack even though the pumping portions are completely clear.
It’s possible for the blood flow to be slowed so far by blockages that your heart starts taking damage, yet still struggles on for five days. Definitely not a common scenario, but it does highlight just how varied and uneven heart attack symptoms are. Which just makes the whole thing that much scarier in my opinion.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
That seems to be a common theme in medicine. You have a super common symptom that is usually caused by something completely harmless, but there’s also a non-zero chance that you’re absolutely screwed.