I’m a reasonably fit 48-year-old man with a desk job. I don’t go to the gym or play sport, but I do walk quite a bit. (My other blog is about a long episodic hiking trip. I can, for instance, walk 10-15 miles without undue discomfort.) My diet has been… OK; we have lot of fish/chicken/pulses and I nearly make 5-a-day but when at work or away I would pretty much have what I fancy. (When the canteen stopped allowing people to have ‘half rice and half chips’ I felt moved to ask for the reinstatement of this option 
) I don’t smoke, and drink moderately and regularly, typically a couple of bottles of real ale at home. I’m not overweight. So to sum up I’m no saint but didn’t feel like a heart-attack-waiting-to-happen.
For a few months an ache in my left shoulder would develop when I walked. I assumed this was a muscular problem or ‘trapped nerve’, but it was never painful enough to do anything about. When the cold weather came the pain (really not much more than discomfort) spread to my chest, and sometimes jaw. As cold air seemed to be the culprit, I was thinking respiratory ailment. It would calm down when I got indoors. My typical daily walk is just over a mile to work, normally not a problem, but I now needed a couple of minute’s rest when I arrived. As I walked along I would feel slightly faint, the colours looked like a badly-developed film from a cheap chemist’s. However I have an active imagination and assumed I was being hypochondriac.
But I went to the doctor, who set me up for a ‘treadmill test’ to ‘rule out’ anything cardiac-related.
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