Pascale, 43 years old

“I didn’t have any chest pain when I had my heart attack. I had gastric pain deep in my sternum and I thought it was bad digestion. I also had pain in my back. I thought it was my spine, which had already been hurting. I tried to soothe the pain with a hot water bottle, but it still spread. I wasn’t worried, but one day I had to stop in the middle of climbing the stairs because I was too out of breath. I told myself I needed to stop smoking. But I never thought about my heart. At the time, I was stressed and not sleeping much. Then one day, I went out to run errands and felt an odd pain in both my arms. It wasn’t my muscles. I felt like something was pressing on me. I told myself it was stress. I took a pain killer and spent the rest of the day feeling quite unwell. In the evening, I had chest pain between my ribs, but I didn’t want to bother the emergency medical services with that. I woke up at 1 a.m. in pain and my daughter insisted on taking me to the hospital. They took an x-ray of my lungs and then an electrocardiogram. And then everybody rushed into the room. I was having a huge heart attack. They did a coronary angioplasty right away and put in a stent. If I had waited any longer, I wouldn’t be here anymore.”