Clear Arteries, Real Pain: Microvascular Angina Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe microvascular angina, the chest pain that comes from the heart's smallest vessels while the large arteries look clean. Writers describe how it began — tightness on cold mornings, in a walk-in freezer, on long flights or alongside hot flushes — and the repeat trips to the emergency department where every tracing came back normal and the word anxiety was offered instead. There is the turning point: a cardiologist who asked about the cold, a PET or cardiac MRI scan, or a functional angiogram that finally showed the small vessels failing to open. Writers describe the trial and adjustment of treatment — amlodipine and swollen ankles, ranolazine and dizziness, nitrates and pounding headaches, beta blockers that helped some and not others — and are honest that many still have bad weeks. Contributors include men, a medical student, a pharmacist, a nurse who used to say it was probably nothing, and a woman who got a name for it at eighty. Later chapters cover sleep apnoea and diabetes as clues, symptoms that follow the menstrual cycle, planning a pregnancy, insurance battles, needing an interpreter, rural distances, and partners watching helplessly.

Who it's for

For anyone told their tests are normal while their chest still hurts, people newly diagnosed with INOCA, partners trying to help, and clinicians who want to hear the patient side of a clear angiogram.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 235 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.