The morning after her 58th birthday party, Carolyn Thomas woke at the crack of dawn. She wrote a stack of thank-you cards to guests and set out to slip the envelopes into the mailboxes of her still-sleeping neighbours. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth houses on her list, she felt a sudden pain shoot down her left arm, accompanied by a wave of nausea so strong she fought the urge to vomit on the sidewalk of her Victoria neighbourhood. Sweating, she grabbed onto a tree and leaned against it, unable to move.
Thomas? symptoms lessened after about 20 minutes. She started walking, slowly, to a nearby hospital. After some ?normal? cardiac diagnostic tests, an emergency physician told to follow up with her family doctor and get medications for acid reflux. Thomas apologized, embarrassed she?d made a fuss over what appeared to be a case of post-party indigestion. Over the next weeks, Thomas swallowed multiple antacid tablets daily. Her symptoms worsened. She flew to Ottawa for her mom?s 80th birthday and endured two severe episodes of pain in the airport. She spent the flight home curled in her seat, consoling herself that it was just severe indigestion.
The next morning, back in the emergency department, she was diagnosed with having a heart attack.
For years, associations like The Heart and Stroke Foundation have been raising awareness about heart attacks in women, emphasizing that symptoms present differently in women than in men. But one important issue is rarely disc...