anybody here ever had a heart attack?

[steppinthrax]

No two heart attacks are the same. As mentioned in this thread, there are conditions that pre-empt a heart attack or act like one without damaging any heart tissue. As for your grandfather dying in his chair, his heart could have given out very quickly.



I'm always interested in how doctors are able to determine the cause of death when someone dies of cancer or something to that effect when in most cases, the only thing that specifically links to the person dying is their heart stopping. Like my grandfather had leukemia yet his death certificate says he died of a heart attack. I mean if your liver fails, eventually toxins build up in the blood and the last thing that happens before the person dies, the heart stops. So how do they come up with the cause of death then? It feels very subjective the way they determine it.

Well when they do a autopsy they take organs out and analyze them.

It's pretty easy to look at a heart and see the color and size of the heart and how much it weights etc... I'm fairly certain they saw black areas in the heart where heart tissue just died.

 

[disappoint]

Yeah I was just walking along on a sidewalk to the store minding my own business and from out of no where comes this heart! Demanded my wallet. I was like wtf is a heart going to do with a wallet? Starts gettin rough with me, I resisted. I tried to fight back but you should have seen this thing! It was all muscle...

 

[SKORPI0]

what kind of car?

2008 Lexus ES350 (black), worth about $12k.

My mistake - Total final bill was actually $5.9K, not the $9k I mentioned.

Parts - $3027 (rear bumper, trunk lid, lamps, body and floor, quarter panel, glass, roof and windshield)
Labor - $2880 (52 hours)

Person who hit me was a 19 yr old male. My car was still drivable after the accident, but had a ugly looking trunk and bumper.
$0 out of pocket my side. Just the inconvenience of bring it to the collision/repair shop (1.6 miles away) and renting a car for 10 days.

 

[brainhulk]

How long can you stay under with cold saline?

I imagine the saline provides no O2 transmission.

Could you simply cool the whole blood down to a few degrees above freezing the pass that through the body?

The therapy is only a couple of hours. Yeah the saline provides no oxygen. It's only used in conjunction with ice packs and cooling blanket to lower your core body temp a couple of degrees, you aren't getting frozen. The goal is to actually to reduce oxygen demand by your tissues because oxygen free radicals during repurfusion is what damages tissue

 

[MongGrel]

I actually think I did about a year ago in the middle of the night.

I went back to sleep, got up and went to work the next day.

If that fucker is gona kill me he ought to do it right next time.

 

[steppinthrax]

2008 Lexus ES350 (black), worth about $12k.

My mistake - Total final bill was actually $5.9K, not the $9k I mentioned.

Parts - $3027 (rear bumper, trunk lid, lamps, body and floor, quarter panel, glass, roof and windshield)
Labor - $2880 (52 hours)

Person who hit me was a 19 yr old male. My car was still drivable after the accident, but had a ugly looking trunk and bumper.
$0 out of pocket my side. Just the inconvenience of bring it to the collision/repair shop (1.6 miles away) and renting a car for 10 days.

Well there you go, you went the Lexus route!!!!

If you can't afford the car why did you buy it?????

 

[steppinthrax]

The therapy is only a couple of hours. Yeah the saline provides no oxygen. It's only used in conjunction with ice packs and cooling blanket to lower your core body temp a couple of degrees, you aren't getting frozen. The goal is to actually to reduce oxygen demand by your tissues because oxygen free radicals during repurfusion is what damages tissue

What happens if you used blood instead of water. I remember on some movie/video I was watching where they actually cooled blood v.s. water.

Also what are the ethics/issues if the body is so far gone and you simply ran tubes into the main arteries in the neck keeping the brain (head) alive??

 

[balloonshark]

I actually think I did about a year ago in the middle of the night.

I went back to sleep, got up and went to work the next day.

If that fucker is gona kill me he ought to do it right next time.

Go get checked out. If it's a blockage it can be fixed but you're rolling the dice if and when you do have a full blown heart attack.

My mother ignored symptoms for a year and she go lucky when she had a massive heart attack. The surgeon told her she was lucky as she was full of clots and had a complete blockage.

 

[brainhulk]

What happens if you used blood instead of water. I remember on some movie/video I was watching where they actually cooled blood v.s. water.

Also what are the ethics/issues if the body is so far gone and you simply ran tubes into the main arteries in the neck keeping the brain (head) alive??

There's no point to using cooled blood. The saline is only used as a tool to lower your core temp. Blood is scarce, it needs to be type and crossmatched, and it would be a complete waste as it's purpose is simply not needed. The body doesn't need more hemoglobin or clotting factors...lol. you actually want your hemoglobin to be on the lower side of normal so blood is less viscous and easier to pump, further reducing stress on the heart

 

[steppinthrax]

There's no point to using cooled blood. The saline is only used as a tool to lower your core temp. Blood is scarce, it needs to be type and crossmatched, and it would be a complete waste as it's purpose is simply not needed. The body doesn't need more hemoglobin or clotting factors...lol. you actually want your hemoglobin to be on the lower side of normal so blood is less viscous and easier to pump, further reducing stress on the heart

How about a machine that uses the patient existing blood? Adding some saline to compensate for loss volume?

 

[KeithTalent]

Nope, not yet. Probably soon though, or maybe cancer. Will be one of the two.

KT

 

[brainhulk]

How about a machine that uses the patient existing blood? Adding some saline to compensate for loss volume?

 

[steppinthrax]

I guess you have more knowledge than me in this area. I've always had fascination with medicine etc....

Esp after i was reading about a doctor that performed a successful head transplant (monkey). There was also a machine that could keep a organ alive after it had been removed from a patient. It's just really fucking interesting.

There are a lot of ethical barriers but if the body of a patient was completely fucked. You could put the brain in some sort of machine that would keep it alive until a suitable body is found for transplant. Of course you would want to "put it under" so when it's revived there is no memory of the event.

 

[dartworth]

Yeah I had one a few years back. Really I guess a few small ones. Walking up stairs was I was very winded, didn't really consider it a heart condition. Went home from work and slept 12 hours. Had a pretty good pain across my shoulders that just would not go away.

Finally had enough of that and drove myself to the ER. Within 45 minutes I was in the cath lab and had two stents put in.

All good and back to work in a few days.

 

[Fritzo]

I have a heart attack every time my wife calls me at work and starts the sentence with "Your son..."

 

[edro]

Well there you go, you went the Lexus route!!!!
If you can't afford the car why did you buy it?????

wat

 

[BAMAVOO]

I had a heart attack 5 1/2 years ago. I wound up having quintuple bypass. I did not have the typical symptoms. I just felt sick at my stomach and very tired. I will come back later and give you a complete run down of what happened, but that is most of it.

 

[geegee69]

man i thought i was having one the other night, no joke. im only 26.

 

[tortillasoup]

man i thought i was having one the other night, no joke. im only 26.

What did you eat prior to the symptoms? Do you remember what you ate in the last 12 hours before the symptoms? Over doing it on sodium and or becoming sodium sensitive can cause heart palpitations.

 

[BD231]

I'm to nutritionally sound to experience a heart attack. Perhaps I should buy some steaks from walmart

 

[marincounty]

Yeah, about three years ago I had a heart attack. Woke up early in the morning with what I thought was heartburn. No pain in the arm, no weakness or tiredness.
I had breakfast and took a shower. Later I was nauseated and knew there was a problem. Never had any previous chest pain or problems. Non-smoker and drinker.
Debated whether to walk to the ER, but thankfully got a ride from a family member.
Local hospital put in a stent, I was in the hospital a couple of days.
Now I have to take a couple of pills every day, that sucks.
Glad to be alive, something like a third of all heart attacks are fatal.
My buddy, who is a smoker, was running around for two days with severe chest pains before he went to the ER, he's fine now-taking some pills.
If you are over say 40, and have chest pain, go get it checked out, it could save your life.

 

[Grooveriding]

Have you ever had a charlie horse in your calve ? For a painful heart attack just imagine that pain, but it's your heart muscle that's starved for oxygen, not a muscle in your leg. With the combo of not just the experience of stabbing pain from an oxygen starved muscle, but also difficulty breathing because your heart is in distress. Still the symptoms are varied and not universal, ranging from mild to very severe, but the most common is sudden shortness of breath. A painless one could be the one that kills you. Heart stops altogether, you feel no pain, because you're gone.

I've seen many people closely after having had one and some taking place. It's not pleasant and most of the time it's clear to the patient that something is seriously wrong with them and they need help.

If you're getting on in years and experience a sudden shortness of breath and/or pain in your chest not following eating something diabolical that gave you heartburn, always worth making the trip to the ER to be sure.

 

[Muse]

Not yet. I seem to be in pretty good shape. The things I do, the way I work out sometimes I figure it could happen, I could die. I figure if I die while over-taxing myself physically, fine, not a bad way to go.

Yes, because "first hand accounts from ATOTers" are INFINITELY more useful, reputable, and insightful than reams of published data from the foremost experts on the planet. Mayo Clinic? Cleveland Clinic? National Institutes of Health? Fuck those guys, some guy on ATOT said it felt like having a Yeti sprinkle pixie urine down my chest!

I imagine they feel a lot like reading some of your threads...

LOL

I'm always interested in how doctors are able to determine the cause of death when someone dies of cancer or something to that effect when in most cases, the only thing that specifically links to the person dying is their heart stopping. Like my grandfather had leukemia yet his death certificate says he died of a heart attack. I mean if your liver fails, eventually toxins build up in the blood and the last thing that happens before the person dies, the heart stops. So how do they come up with the cause of death then? It feels very subjective the way they determine it.

My guess is a whole lot of the time they don't do enough of an "autopsy" to sleuth out the process of cessation of life, what really went on. The heart stops, obviously, when you die. The heart stopping is almost the touchstone, the definition of death. The lazy coroner (or one without the motivation to go further for whatever reasons) could just say heart attack. Determining otherwise might be a very lengthy, problematic and expensive proposition unless there's a significant medical history for the individual that's available. Do dead people always get inspected by a coroner? I suspect that they often are just sent to a funeral home and a cause of death is indicated almost by guesswork!

From Wikipedia's page on Coroner:

As of 2004, of the 2,342 death investigation offices in the United States, 1,590 are coroners offices. Of those, only 82 serve jurisdictions of more than 250,000 people.[17] Qualifications for coroners are set by individual states and counties in the U.S. and vary widely. In many jurisdictions, little or no training is required, even though a coroner may overrule a forensic pathologist in naming a cause of death. A coroner may be elected or appointed. Some coroners hold office by virtue of holding another office: in Nebraska, the county district attorney is the coroner; in many counties in Texas, the Justice of the Peace may be in charge of death investigation; in other places, the sheriff is the coroner. This last is an historical irony, given the provisions of Chapter 24 of Magna Carta (see United Kingdom: History, above).

My father had a stroke (brain) once and didn't even know until he had a 2nd major stroke (but still minor) and they found more than one stroke area in the brain.

My uncle had a stroke (his first, AFAIK), and he just dropped dead in his bathroom, period.

2008 Lexus ES350 (black), worth about $12k.

My mistake - Total final bill was actually $5.9K, not the $9k I mentioned.

Parts - $3027 (rear bumper, trunk lid, lamps, body and floor, quarter panel, glass, roof and windshield)
Labor - $2880 (52 hours)

Person who hit me was a 19 yr old male.

I was a pretty dangerous driver before I turned maybe 23 or so. I saw the stupidity of my ways and made a big attitude adjustment. I guess it was a combination of seeing a film (required by the court after a traffic violation, that showed how horrific the results of accidents can be), and having a close call or two about the same time. Now I'm one of the safest drivers around.