Marriage is good for the heart — if you’re a man

Sometimes you don’t need a scientific study to tell you an obvious truth.

Last week, a small item in the Science section of The New York Times reported results of a Canadian research project aimed at determining if marital status affects how fast someone gets to the hospital after a heart attack.

Care to guess? Being married is better, but only if you’re a man. Researchers checked how long it took some 4,401 heart attack victims to arrive at the hospital after the onset of chest pain. They defined a “late arrival” as a delay of six hours or more. Obviously, late arrival could also mean being DOA.

According to the results, most married victims got help a half hour sooner than those who were not married. “But when researchers analyzed the data, separately for men and women,” the story reported, “they found that while married men were more than 60 percent less likely to arrive late than their single peers, there was no statistically significant difference between married and single women.”

The author of the study said, “Wives are more likely to take the caregiver role and advise their husbands to go to the E.R.”

I wonder how much money they spent on this study. I could have told them the answer, and so could most wives.

Don’t the researchers understand that a guy doesn’t instantly drop the remote and help his wife into the car just because she has some vague “discomfort”? What if the Yankees are playing? What if Phil Mickelson is about to sink a putt? How can you turn off “Three and a Half Men” before the last canned laugh? And if you’re mowing the lawn, you can’t just leave the job half done.

I speak from experience. My husband had a heart attack in our house 15 years ago, at 7 in the morning. It was three weeks after he had two stents implanted in his heart. He had just come back from an exercise swim, slipped back into bed where I was reading, and said he wasn’t feeling great. In 10 seconds we were in the car, and I was speeding to the nearest hospital. I know we should have called 911, but the point is I didn’t wait. I didn’t accept his explanation that it was indigestion with a chaser of jaw pain. I knew something was wrong and I got him to a hospital. There is a critical moment when a wife or husband must take charge, not give his or her partner a choice but get help fast.

Last winter, the situation was reversed. It was February. I went to sleep, and was awakened by excruciating pain in my upper abdomen. I stumbled into the den, where my husband was watching TV. I believe it was “Law and Order SVU.” I was hunched over and finally crumpled on the floor, clutching my chest. I couldn’t take a deep breath but, stupidly, I didn’t consider that it could be my heart. No one ever does, especially not women.

My husband had one eye on me and one eye on Mariska Hargitay. “Want some water?” he asked. “What can I do? Is it the spare ribs?”

Honestly, if the situation had been reversed, he would have been in a CCU within a half hour. I took a Pepcid, and after some time the pain began to subside. Turned out it was a gall bladder attack, and I had surgery later in the spring. But the point is, it could have been a cardiac emergency, and by the time “Law and Order” was over, I could have been the late me.

In all fairness, my husband wouldn’t have responded differently for himself. Given the choice, he wouldn’t head for the E.R., no matter the symptoms. But part of the reason for his relaxed attitude is that he knows I’ll get him there even if I have to carry him on my back.

Apparently, as the Canadian study shows, he and I are not the only couple with different approaches to a partner’s cardiac symptoms. Women, as caregivers, ring the alarm bell. Men, in general, are less apt to act.

The salient point here is that “wait and see” is not a wise response to chest pain. An unnecessary trip to the E.R. is no big deal. A delay can be catastrophic.

I was kidding, of course, about the Yankee game … unless we’re talking World Series, seventh game, ninth inning, tie score, bases loaded. Then I’m in trouble.

Copyright © 2011 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 304.