1859 Women and heart attacks

Since it is now well known that heart attacks, not breast cancer, is the big killer of women (deaths from cardiovascular diseases in women exceed the total number of deaths caused by the next 16 causes), I was very surprised to come across Dr. Helen's story of her misdiagnosed heart attack. I learned about the risk of young women and heart attacks way back in my car pooling days, when one of the mothers of my kindergarten group who was then in her mid-30s, had a heart attack and needed to rely on the rest of us to fulfill her driving duties. Since my son is now 37, that has been awhile.

Dr. Helen tells of being an athletic 37 year old in excellent health, and then developing terrifying shortness of breath episodes. In the ER she was given a shot for an allergic reaction while a man with the same symptoms was whisked off for heart tests. After several trips to the ER and being put off as an anxious woman with panic attacks, she finally begged her own internist for tests, and then it was determined that she had suffered from a heart attack and also had a ventricular aneurysm as a result of not resting her heart after the heart attack. Because she'd been told that she had panic disorder, she thought that exercise would be good.

Hers is a scary story, and you should read it yourself.