DEE ANDERSON, HEART PATIENT: How are you doing today?</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dee Anderson didn't think her extreme fatigue was a warning sign until a doctor told her.</s>ANDERSON: He said, Dee, you're having a heart attack.</s>COHEN: Like many, she'd been ignoring the signs.</s>ANDERSON: Pressure, slight pressure in my chest that ran across the chest, not in one particular spot, no pain, no stabbing pain, nothing like that.</s>DR. SUSMITA PARASHAR, EMORY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Take deep breaths.</s>COHEN: Men and women don't typically have the same heart attack symptoms. Often women don't realize they're having a heart attack because their symptoms can be much more subtle.</s>PARASHAR: So, women may have usual fatigue for months, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting. They may have chest pain, or discomfort or any abnormal feeling in the upper part of the body, stomach, back, arm or neck, or throat.</s>COHEN: Two weeks after her first bout of chest tightness, Dee's symptoms got worse.</s>ANDERSON: It wasn't just a pressure anymore or discomfort. It was an ache, like a bad toothache and suddenly I felt that same ache in my elbows, just in my elbows, in my chest and in my elbows and then I knew it was cardiac.</s>COHEN: Dee called her doctor who told her to get to the E.R., saving her heart and her life. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN.
Why Women Miss Heart Attack Signs