Chrizum said:
Although I know quite a few things about medicine, I'm not a doctor, so if you're certain of yourself chances are you're right and I'm wrong. However, I find it tricky to say for certain it's not related to his heart via an online forum. He describes it as a sharp pain in his heart but descriptions can be wrong, it may just have been a prominent pain on left side of his chest, which would fit with cardiovascular problems. |
I hear what you are saying. It's a very sensitive thing to try to evaluate symtoms through text in a simple internet forum. I agree. And in general I try to avoid it completely.
Also, you have a very good point in how people describe their symptoms "wrong" and subjectively. That is very common and it takes experience and wisdom to evaluate it correctly for a proper analysis and proper advice. I agree with better safe than sorry and I agree that the general stance a layman forum poster should take is to strongly recommend the person in question, like in this case the OP, to seek out a professional IRL.
But, and this is just an interesting side note. Often a nurse's job is to do exactly this (to give advice based on scant information) . The nurse is often called by a patient over the phone and the nurse has to decide weather the symtoms are serious or not, or if they can be ignored completely and decide how urgent the situation is. And nurses do these decisions with much less knowledge of the human body than doctor's possess but they're trained to do it using their own tricks and methods, which I highly respect because they're very good at it.
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