Fire Walk With Me

thartist72:

Comedian Rosie O’ Donnell says on her blog she had a heart attack last week and didn’t know it. But the symptoms she describes were classic heart attack symptoms — for a woman, that is.

Common wisdom — reinforced in no small part by Hollywood — envisions a man clutching his chest and falling to the ground. And for men, dropping dead often is the first sign of a heart attack. But things can be more subtle and confusing for a woman, just as O’ Donnell describes in free verse on her blog: “my body hurt, i had an ache in my chest, both my arms were sore, everything felt bruised.”

She had recently helped an old woman who had fallen, and thought she had just strained a muscle.

“i became nauseous, my skin was clammy, i was very very hot, i threw up,” added the 50-year-old star.

The signs were just what the American Heart Association predicts. “Women can experience a heart attack without chest pressure,” Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at New York University and American Heart Association volunteer, says in a statement.

“Instead they may experience shortness of breath, pressure or pain in the lower chest or upper abdomen, dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting, upper back pressure or extreme fatigue.”

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