Not a doc of any type but 5 years ago I took my mother to the ER the night of my father's funeral. She presented symptoms of a heart attack, the staff called a code and did their thing. Tests showed no blockage and no damage to the heart which puzzled the cardiologists. Fortunately one of the cardiologists knew of, what was then, a recent study from Japan and recognized that the symptoms fit the profile of the recently name "broken heart syndrome". As the parent poster described, she spent a few days in the hospital and then recovered within a month as with most patients.
That said, no one should ever think heart attack symptoms are really the lesser "broken heart syndrome", regardless of the emotional or stressful circumstances. It it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, go to the ER and let the doctors decide if it's a duck.
On an OT note, dying of a broken heart should have been recognized years earlier. This Wikipedia entry gives the full story.
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Not a doc of any type but 5 years ago I took my mother to the ER the night of my father's funeral. She presented symptoms of a heart attack, the staff called a code and did their thing. Tests showed no blockage and no damage to the heart which puzzled the cardiologists. Fortunately one of the cardiologists knew of, what was then, a recent study from Japan and recognized that the symptoms fit the profile of the recently name "broken heart syndrome". As the parent poster described, she spent a few days in the hospital and then recovered within a month as with most patients. That said, no one should ever think heart attack symptoms are really the lesser "broken heart syndrome", regardless of the emotional or stressful circumstances. It it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, go to the ER and let the doctors decide if it's a duck. On an OT note, dying of a broken heart should have been recognized years earlier. This Wikipedia entry gives the full story.