I had some classic chest pains, no shortness of breath, no nausea, and no sweats. Nonetheless, the pain was enough to have my wife drive me to a nearby clinic. Didn't matter that I kept on saying it wasn't a heart attack, but they treated it as such. I was taking Celebrex at the time and my mother's side of the family has a history of heart problems. My EKG was off so they drew blood, gave me aspirins, called an ambulance and I was in the hospital in short time.
Wound up to be an inflammation of the muscles around my rib cage, by it's good to know that the clinic crew wasn't listening to my protests and treated the episode as a heart attack. Better safe than sorry.
I know a female (43) who went to the ER with shortness of breath, tingling arms, and sweating. Her father had his first heart attack at age 46 so she was keenly aware of heart disease. The hospital staff was very casual with her. Had her take a seat and wait for her turn. Finally, got her into a room. Did not draw blood. No urgency in her care. First they gave her what they called a GI Cocktail --- a combination of mylanta and lidocane --- to see if she was experiencing indigestion, nope. Finally they put the EKG leads on her. They were 'comfortable' that she was not having a heart attack. They gave her xanax and sent her home. She was sick for several months after the hospital episode. Very tired; just generally sick. It took months for her to get her strength back.
To this day she and her family continue to wonder if she did in fact experience a heart attack.
Suggestion ... if you are a woman or take a woman to the ER with shortness of breath, sweating, tingling ... DON'T leave until they do blood work to determine if it is a heart attack or not.
Ask some one with the flu if they have these symptoms, and the govt (aka taxpayers aka you and me) will be giving them $5K doses of nyquill at the end of their "ER visit".
I have had many ER experiences that were less than great. My husband had a stroke in 1999, we took him to an urgent care type clinic and they diagnosed stroke and sent him by ambulance to the hospital. At the hospital the ER doc on duty acted like it was all a joke and was convinced hubby was not and did not actually have a stroke. The ER doc changed his tune when the CT scan was done and only then got in gear and acted like it was really an emergency situation. Thank goodness our regular Dr showed up then becuase I was about to murder the doc in the ER. The nurses were trying to tell him what the ambulance people had told them about hubby's vitals and he was blowing them off too. I can only imagine what could have happened if we had taken him to the ER to begin with, Doc ER would probably have sent him home.
In contrast, when one of my daughters was away at college her roomate called us and said she thought my daughter was very sick. I went over and took her to the ER, as I was trying to sign her in, the triage nurse peeked out the door to talk to the people at the desk, my daughter was literally hanging on me in the hall- the triage nurse grabbed her and took her right to a bed and started checking her out. I was caught by surprise- not sure what that nurse saw when she looked at my daughter- but daughter had a raging kidney infectiion and her kidneys were not working properly, it did turn out to be very serious.
I guess it is like everything else- when you go to the ER you may get good help- or not.
Every single person in that ER needs to be charged with murder and put in jail for 30 years.
That is incompetence beyond the pale of any logic or brains and by walking among us, they put us all at risk. They need to be locked away from the rest of humanity.
It is ER 101 that possible heart attack victims come above other things. This is just common sense.
Nobody in that emergency room has any, and that is flippin' scary.
Always carry a heart attack first aid kit. I have one I carry all the time. It is home made but quite servicable.
I have a small metal can, the size of a quarter that contains two aspirin tablets.
Simple but very effective.
Doctors suck.
The local hospital hospital where we used to live had a woman that brought in her husband with chest pains. The emergency room sent him home, they said it was gas pains. He left the emergency room, got into to his car, had a massive heart attack and died in the emergency room parking lot. The wife sued and won.
Thanks for posting this.
My brother's wife, at age 34, went to the doctor complaining of back and chest pains and he sent her home with pain pills.
My brother found her the next morning dead of a massive heart attack. They had a son 14 and daughter 8, which my brother raised alone after that.
My stepdaughter's husband, in 2001 was diagnosed with leukemia, and went through massive chemo and into remission.
In 2004 his cancer came back, he'd just had his first chemo, and became ill. Stepdaughter took him to the emergency room, and they kept him waiting in the waiting room for three hours. He was so sick and weak he layed on the floor in the ER waiting room, while they treated people with colds, coughs, broken bones, etc. When (after 3 hours) they finally took him into the back he went into cardiac arrest and died, leaving a wife and 15 year old son, and daughters aged eight and three.
This does happen, all too frequently. And no, none of these people sued. But it does send a wake up call.
When the ambulance arrived and I was all buckled in, the nurse said to me, "Now, start at the beginning." To which I replied, "Well, I was born around 4:00 a.m. on the morning of October the third, 19..."
Well, she did say, "start at the beginning."
I don't think they liked me very much.
I wonder how many illegal Mexicans were clogging the ER for their routine health care stuff at the time.
When I was a brand-new cop, we were fairly close to a hospital when we saw a 12-year-old kid fall off of his bike. We pulled over and asked if he was OK. His breathing was labored, and he said that his chest hurt. We gave him a lift to the hospital and took him to the ER.
Turns out he was having a no-kidding heart attack. The doctor later told us that if we hadn't been there, he probably would have died.
I see only one *possible* variable that was left out of the story and that would be the conditions of those ahead of her. Perhaps they were perceived to be much worse than she was.
I was taken to the ER by friends 4 years ago and looked terrible. I am morbidly obese (say the damn doctors) and at the ER admission process my pulse was 153 and the nurse dropped everything and called for a stretcher. She started to panic. I told her that the quickened pulse was the result of the pain that I was in and that the pulse would return to normal within ten minutes once I was able to sit or lie still.
She responded appropriately, but in my case unnecessarily. Ten minutes later, I was on a monitor and my pulse was back to normal. In fact, I think my pulse was normal before hers.
PS -- I was trained as an army medic and had triage training, worked in a hospital, and knew that I was only in a lot of discomfort, but not at all in a state of distress as the vitals seemed to indicate. Perhaps this woman, once in the ER downplayed her own symptoms and patients who were seen as being more serious were seen first.
I am a medical recruiter. If you ever get happy feet and want to move somewhere else, I'd be honored to present such an impressive nurse with common sense!
;-)
Also it is not uncommon for women having a heart attack to have NONE of these classic symptoms.
I'd like to make several observations (RN for 17 years):
1. Our ED's are over-crowded because of several reasons; illegals using them for primary care, those without a PCP using them for primary care, people INAPPROPRIATELY using ED's for non-emergent non-traumatic problems (sore throat, cold, sinus infection), and lack of financial motive for those on Medicaid to use the PCP office rather than the ED(while an HMO patient gets whacked a $75-100 copay or more, Medicaid patients don't; who do you think is more likely to visit an ED?).
2. We don't know the facts here, although it does appear that the staff were negligent. We only know what we are told; did the patient truly come in c/o chest pain and SOB? Everything is not always as it seems; I've seen it happen several times during my career.
3. I'm no lawyer, but I doubt that this is homicide; manslaughter maybe, but not intentional murder.
Finally, as an ED nurse, you'll appreciate this one: I once worked with a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician; her pet peeve was when you called it an "Emergency ROOM"; "it's a department, not a room".