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Women's Cardiovascular Healthcare Foundation
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TESTIMONIALS
Sales Director, Rouen

Marie, 44

Marie, 44

I learned four important things over the May 1st weekend that I’d like to share here, even though they seem unrelated to Labor Day.

Saturday, April 29. 8 a.m. I wake up and feel a sharp pain in my chest, like a cramp shooting down my arm... on the right side. I feel worse by the minute. I’ll later learn that I’m suffering from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Here’s what I learned…

1- When the emergency services send an ambulance, say yes and don’t ask your husband to drive you to the ER because you think it will be faster.
In the event of a heart attack, he won’t be able to help you… because he’s driving.

2- Women experience heart pain very differently from men: heart pain in women can manifest as pain in the back, the lower chest, or, like me, on the right side—so at first glance, it seems unrelated to the heart (even in the ER, they initially suspected a pulmonary embolism). Personally, I didn’t know this, and I had in mind
the cliché of a man clutching his left chest in the grip of intense pain. That wasn’t the case for me at all; it felt more like a very severe cramp on the right side.

3- I was lucky to come across a young emergency room doctor who followed protocol to the letter: because a young woman (in the medical sense of the term—I am young), with no history of heart issues and no risk factors (diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, etc.), would have been sent home quickly if this young doctor hadn’t performed two consecutive tests for troponin, an enzyme used to assess heart damage (my troponin level went from 7 to 4,000 in less than 4 hours, with a normal range of 45). So following procedures, whether in business or in a hospital, is a good thing.

4- Myocarditis is “just” a virus that had the good sense to settle in the heart. It is also the leading cause of sudden death among athletes: never exercise while you have a fever, or within 8 days of being sick

Thank you to the nursing staff of the Cardiology Intensive Care Unit at Clinique Saint Hilaire.

Take care of yourselves.

 
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