Warning signs and symptoms of a heart attack include: Pressure, fullness or a squeezing pain in the center of your chest that lasts for more than a few minutes; Pain extending beyond your chest to your shoulder, arm, back, or even to your teeth and jaw Increasing episodes of chest pain Prolonged pain in the upper abdomen Shortness of breath Sweating Impending sense of doom Lightheadedness Fainting Nausea and vomiting                                                        http://www.mayoclinic.com __________________________________________________________________________________   (8) Chest Pain    Beginning at about one-thirty in the afternoon on November 3, 2005, I felt a slight pain in my chest as I was sipping a cup of coffee at home, looking at the computer monitor. Just earlier, between noon and one o’clock, I had been hiking around in snowshoes in zero-degree temperatures. The pain slowly grew more noticeable, and I thought it was some kind of heartburn from the coffee. When the intensity continued to increase, I took some Tums: no effect. As the pain got worse, I began to worry. I lay down and took some nitroglycerin: still no effect. The squeezing pain continued to increase. At that point, I interrupted my wife at her work and told her of my symptoms. She found some aspirin, to reduce the blood coagulation. I swallowed what I could. By this time I was bending over from the pain, and having a hard time catching my breath. My wife drove me to the hospital, thinking that we could get there faster than it would take for an ambulance to get out to our house and then take us there. (We should have called the ambulance; the EMTs could have started medications and alerted the hospital while we were en route.) At the hospital, they immediately recognized that I was in trouble from a probable heart attack, inserted three different IV’s, took an EKG, and soon started administering blood thinners to try to break up the blood clot.  My chest pain continued to increase, though, as if my chest were being slowly squeezed, tighter and tighter. Then, about three hours after the heart attack had started, my consciousness started fading, and I experienced that gray fog again, as I had five years earlier. I realized, dimly, that this could be the end of my life. I couldn’t believe it. The order was given to put me on an emergency jet and evacuate me to Anchorage.  On the plane, I was strapped to a gurney and hooked up to oxygen and an EKG machine.  My wife came with me, and I vaguely remember there being two nurses and two pilots in the plane. There was also some strange, dim, soft red light that gave a strange glow to everything. I thought to myself: This is the most  leg room I have had on a plane to Anchorage. At some point during the flight, my chest pain subsided, and the gray fog lifted.   February 20, 2007