Say,
There's a reason that the heart attack warning signs are a bit vague when they're described online. It's because everyone experiences them a but differently. Based on my experience, though, you know when it happens to you.
I need to preface my experience having a heart attack with the fact that I have been an athlete my entire life, from my early teenage years to the present. During my time first as a gymnast and wrestler, then through many years as a weightlifter, powerlifter, long distance runner and bodyweight strength trainer, I experienced every kind of shoulder pain, chest pressure several times from a ligament strain near the sternum and other assorted pains, including scary jaw pain that turned out to be a cavity. Although I wondered a couple of times whether the chest pressure was heart related, my doctor at the time quickly disabused me of that notion and the jaw pain disappeared like magic when the dentist filled my cavity.
When I had the heart attack, there was no mistaking it. I woke up with deep pain in my right shoulder and I immediately knew that this was not workout related pain. I can't describe how or why I knew it, but I just knew it was something else. Then I felt the somewhat mild pressure in the middle of my chest that sort of radiated outward. It didn't go away if I moved a certain way and, again, I just knew it would not go away with deep massage like the ligament strain near my sternum had gone away. And I went into a cold sweat. I knew I was having a heart attack. It was around 5:30 am, I woke my wife to tell her I was having a heart attack and I called 911.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind. It was qualitatively different than any chest or shoulder pain or injury that I had ever suffered, although it's hard for me to articulate how I actually knew this. My best conjecture is that we all have some sort of innate organism based understanding that something is terribly wrong with us and that it is life threatening. It may be possible to ignore this feeling, to talk your way out of it, but if you remain in touch with your body, as I always was as an athlete, then it becomes undeniable. Actually, the hard part for me was waking my wife to tell her I was having a heart attack. The hard part for her was everything that came after my heart surgery and complications that kept me in a medically induced coma for the next two weeks and then in inpatient rehab for an additional three weeks learning to walk and feed myself again.
I'm 70 now, well recovered, an athlete once again, but an older and wiser one, having faced death and facing it every day still as it sits over my left shoulder and I appreciate every moment on this my borrowed time.
Good luck and good health.
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Ira Reid
Hoboken NJ
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