If your heartburn lasts more than 24 hours, please, please, PLEASE go see a doctor.

I did not. I fought unrelenting heartburn for 5 days. In fairness, it did start 3 days after Thanksgiving, and I DID have the extra plate of sweet potatoes. Antacids did nothing, Pepto did nothing.

On the 5th day, the burning pain moved into my upper arms, which I did not know was a thing, and in the center of my chest it felt like I had a chunk of rock, pulling down on all my innards.

Advice nurse sent me to the ER, ER used a simple blood test to confirm the heart attack, but by day 5 the damage was done and the only fix was full blown open heart surgery.

Doc explained the heavy feeling was my heart only pumping out 30% of what it should be, and that’s right on the line of walking around, talking to people and no longer walking around, talking to people.

Wait, it’s possible to have a heart attack for 5 days? I thought a heart attack means your heart stops and you pass out?

Reading these comments is exposing how little I really know how cardiology. This is what it feels like to be on the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve.

A heart attack is a damaging lack of blood flow to the heart. This is very often caused by your heart beating wrong (or not at all) but can have many other causes. It’s also important to note that the heart largely does not receive oxygen from the blood inside it; it has its own set of blood vessels on the outside feeding it. Therefore you can have a heart attack even though the pumping portions are completely clear.

It’s possible for the blood flow to be slowed so far by blockages that your heart starts taking damage, yet still struggles on for five days. Definitely not a common scenario, but it does highlight just how varied and uneven heart attack symptoms are. Which just makes the whole thing that much scarier in my opinion.