A funky-feeling arm
“I felt like my arm was asleep,” says Tara Robinson, a school counselor, who, incredibly, survived three heart attacks in one week at the age of 40. For the first two, the feeling would emerge for a couple of minutes and then go away. By the time she arrived at the hospital, the symptoms were gone and she was sent back home without treatment. “I thought maybe I was working out too hard at the gym or I slept on it wrong,” she says. By the time the third heart attack struck, that feeling was much more intense and persistent, and impossible to ignore.

Another heart attack survivor, Lilly Rocha described her arm as feeling “sore”—a part of a general soreness experienced in her entire upper left side, along with her jaw and chest. At the time, she was 37 and a corporate vice president who organized international events; she’d jet-set from country to country on a regular basis—so naturally, she attributed it to the stress of travel. It wasn’t until a co-worker (who had himself experienced a heart attack) insisted on taking her to a hospital did she realize the shocking truth: She just had a heart attack