The only breathing technique that helps a person having a heart attack, is the technique using the nasal cannula the medics put on your face before they rush you in with sirens roaring. Anything else is urban myth, a.k.a. BS.

The aspirin though is not BS. It's as effective for thinning the blood as drugs that cost $200 a month.

 Originally Posted By: Kanektok Kid

All I remember from the hospital was a nurse asking if this had ever happened before, and sheepishly admitting that it had.
I could almost see her roll her eyes at me, even though she probably didn't want it to show.




I roll my eyes without even trying to hide it. I'd beat my head against the wall if it would help. I'll openly tell my clients that waiting was a stupid move. What I NEVER do, is give anyone a hard time for coming in when it turned out to be really just an ulcer flaring up, or "gas pain".
No nurse or MD I've ever worked with will give a person any trouble for coming in with chest pain.

In fact you get bumped ahead of everybody else in the waiting room if you come in by private vehicle with chest pain. If the ER I work at has absolutely none of their 32 beds available, your EKG will be done in a special room in the waiting area, usually within 10 minutes of arrival, and shown immediately to one of our ER physicians. If I'm working, then in that same waiting/holding area your IV will be placed, your bloodwork drawn and sent to the lab, chest xrays will be ordered, you'll be given aspirin and nitro if you meet criteria, and you'll be placed on a cardiac monitor. Once I get started, all that can be done within about 20 minutes. After which you get sent to the nearest available ER bed for an MD evaluation.

All the interventions and diagnostic tests are tracked for timeliness. The team at St Peters constantly makes adjustments to shave minutes off the process. It reminds me of a racing pit team. Its the contrast between the pressured rush of the medical team, where minutes are measured, against the fact that someone waited extra hours, days, weeks, with their symptoms, that's part of what fuels the eye rolling.

We prefer that people with chest pain call 911, but even a call to your doctors office is preferable to waiting at home for the pain to go away.

Here's a bit of truth...all pain and all bleeding eventually stop. Dying is 100% effective at stopping both.