Heart attacks are any person's worst nightmare, regardless of gender. But if you're a woman, your heart attack might look significantly different from a man's, which means you might not even realize what's happening. One viral Twitter thread aims to change that.
Twitter user @geewheezie suffered a heart attack earlier this month, and it didn't feel anything like what she expected.
"I want to warn women our heart attacks feel different," she wrote. "I had a 95% block in my left anterior descending artery. I'm alive because I called 911. I never had chest pain. It wasn't what you read in pamphlets. I had it off & on for weeks."
While the "typical" heart attack involves serious chest pain, this woman experienced pain in other areas, like her upper back, shoulder blades, and arms.
"I actually thought it was muscle strain," @geewheezie wrote. "It wasn't until I broke into drenching sweat & started vomiting that I called 911."
Now this is a post that deserves to go viral. If more women knew about this difference in symptoms, they might not wait so long to get help.
When you picture a heart attack, you probably picture the stereotypical symptoms, like extreme chest pain and shortness of breath.
But one woman's viral Twitter thread is raising awareness that heart attacks can often look much different, particularly for women.
The woman, a Twitter user known as @geewheezie, had a heart attack just earlier this month, and the symptoms didn't feel anything like what she expected.
Instead of chest pain, she had pain across her upper back and shoulder blades, as well as down both arms.
Even though @geewheezie is a nurse, she didn't recognize her symptoms as a heart attack — an oversight that could have easily cost her her life.
The woman was in the middle of helping her mother when the symptoms began, and like so many women, she figured she'd just "tough it out" because the pain "wasn't real bad."
Thankfully, she made it to the hospital just in time.
Now she wants to raise awareness about what heart attacks can actually look like for women. As one health professional tweeted, heart attack symptoms in women often include nausea, unexplained fatigue, discomfort between shoulder blades, and shortness of breath. Chest pain may or may not ever figure into the equation, and you might experience all or just a few of the symptoms.
In response to @geewheezie's thread, many other women have chimed in to share their own similar heart attack experiences.
Like @geewheezie, these women experienced symptoms that didn't line up with what they imagined a "heart attack" to be.
And like @geewheezie, they were lucky enough to rush to the hospital just in time, which is why they're alive to tweet these stories.
Too often, women (and their doctors) minimize physical pain and brush it aside, and the results can be deadly.
"My sister died just this way 11 years ago this week," one user wrote. "She left work and drove herself to her doctor's office and collapsed in the waiting room."
"I was at a funeral Thursday for a woman who was sick all last weekend, starting Friday night… reportedly vomiting and diarrhea," another user tweeted. "She had had a massive heart attack and flat lined in the ambulance Sunday morning. She was 77. This tweet is important."
Thankfully, women like @geewheezie and some health professionals are working to spread this knowledge far and wide.
If you didn't know, now you do — make sure to spread the message and tell a friend.
