Chest pain is a common occurrence, but it can leave many people fearing they’re having a heart attack.
Nikki, an estate agent from Houston, Texas, recently shared a warning about the symptoms of the condition after experiencing a cardiac event, despite having no known risk factors.
Taking to TikTok, she described how the first warning signs appeared a week before the event, noting that it all began with a minor niggle in her shoulder.
“I’m 46 years old and two days ago I had a heart attack," she told viewers. "I have no previous medical conditions, I have never taken a Covid vaccine. I had some warnings approximately a week before."
Nikki noticed her first symptoms a week before the cardiac event
GETTY / TIKTOK
Despite having zero health concerns, Nikki began experiencing unusual symptoms including shoulder pain and nausea when she woke.
“It felt I was sleeping on it wrong, which I chopped up to possibly being frozen shoulder because of perimenopause," she explained.
She initially dismissed the warning signs and continued with her daily routine, but they kept striking.
“The day before I had my heart attack, I woke in the morning and my shoulder was sore and I felt like I was going to throw up," she said, adding that she experienced the same symptoms of the day of the cardiac event.
It was only when her chest began to tighten "like someone was squeezing it", that she notified her husband.
“At that point I held my husband up and told him, don’t go to work yet, I’m really not feeling that well," she said.
“I took a shower... I actually had a doctor’s appointment for 10 o’clock that morning for something else and I said, 'go ahead and go to work because I’m going to be at the doctor’s office later anyway'."
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Heart attack is a leading cause of death around the world GETTYAfter visiting her doctor, who advised her to go to A&E if symptoms returned, she experienced a full-blown heart attack.
Doctors were initially puzzled by her case because they could find no blockages or plaque buildup in her arteries. A specialist later put it down to a 'perfect storm of perimenopause and recent illness".
According to the NHS, pain caused by a heart attack often goes down the left arm, or both arms, as well as the neck, jaw and back.
Hospitals in the UK receive roughly over 100,000 admissions each year due to heart attacks, stressing the importance of acting swiftly when warning signs appear.
