Can anyone explain what “MI” means on an EKG result?
MI means myocardial infarction or damage to the heart muscle due to lack of oxygen. You apparently had a heart attack at some point. Women often manifest signs and symptoms of heart attack different from the conventional “left arm/elephant on the chest” type thing. Some people have no symptoms at all. Women can manifest angina (chest pain from lack of blood to the heart and ensuing muscle damage) as fatigue, jaw pain, neck pain, pain between the shoulder blades, shortness of breath or indigestion. Because women often don’t notice or pass off these symptoms as something else, heart attacks in women can result in a greater incidence of heart failure (where the heart pump doesn’t work as efficiently to move blood). Because women’s blood vessels to their hearts tend to be smaller then men’s, women can have heart damage from vasospasm (spasmodic contraction of the artery) and doesn’t have to be from plaque. Heart disease in women affects more women than breast cancer by a large margin, yet
