My heart attack in January produced it's first "scare" the other day. I had just arrived in the parking lot of the Heart Center for my exercise class when I felt a slight pain in my chest. I didn't think too much of it but as I walked to the gym the pain grew in intensity from a 1 to a 4, and it didn't seem to want to slow down.
I went ahead and had them do the routine blood pressure check and it was fine. I told them I didn't feel that great and was going to pass on the exercise. They asked what kind of pain and I told them the chest.
Seconds later they had me hooked to a heart monitor and oxygen tank. They the nurse gave me two squirts of Nitroglycerin. All of this helped and within five minutes the pain was gone. Meanwhile they called my doctor who happened to be at the nearby hospital emergency room. He said to drive over and he would check me out.
A couple of hours later he said it wasn't a heart attack but he wanted to see what caused it and scheduled a heart cath for the following morning. I stayed there overnight.
The heart cath went well and he found nothing wrong with the stents he installed in January. So after all that he concluded that it was probably due to stress brought on by my mother's recent death and two brothers who also suffer from serious illnesses.
So the end result is that "stress" does manifest itself in harmful ways. Therefore, it goes without saying that avoiding stress is good for you. Certainly is for me.
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