"I don't think he had a heart attack,"the patient's wife declared emphatically. "I don't care what the doctor in the hospital said." The patient nodded his agreement. "But we need to be sure," she added in a distinctive Long Island accent. That's why they had gone to see Dr. Bruce Decter in New Hyde Park, N.Y., a cardiologist just out of training ¡ª to get a second opinion from someone a little closer to the books. The patient, a lanky 42-year-old man with a chiseled jaw, retreating hairline and skinny ponytail, seemed tired and anxious and grateful to have his childhood sweetheart do all the talking.
He had chest pain off and on for most of his adult life. His internist didn¡¯t think it was his heart, and a normal stress test done the previous year seemed to confirm that. Then the week before his visit to Decter, his chest began to hurt while making love. It spread to his left shoulder and arm. And it didn't go away. He hardly slept at all that night because of the pain and a gnawing anxiety that this time it really was a heart attack.
First thing the next morning he went to his internist. An EKG was normal, but the patient was so worried that his doctor arranged for him to see a cardiologist that afternoon. By then the patient was pale, sweaty and shaking. "I think you're having a heart attack,"the cardiologist told the patient and then sent him straight to the E.R. The EKG done in the hospital was normal, but a series of blood tests indicated that he was having a heart attack, and a big one. He was rushed to the cardiac catheterization lab to see if the clogged vessel could be reopened. To the doctors' utter amazement, there was no blockage; his heart looked fine.
