It’s the middle of the night. You don’t feel good, but you can’t point to one specific thing—just an overall flu-like feeling. Then nausea. Maybe you run to the bathroom a few times. You think "OK, I ate something really bad. This will pass."

But it doesn’t pass. You feel sicker. You look terrible. Finally, you go to the hospital emergency room. They say you’ve had a mild heart attack.

"But I didn’t have crushing chest pain. I didn’t have shooting pains down my left arm, or even numbness. I’m only 34."

No, it doesn’t always happen like that—crushing chest pain or numbness in your arm. And you don’t have to be ‘old.’

So now you know. You’ve got heart disease. Now, and for the rest of your life. You’re holding a heart attack at bay. You’re scared. Your family’s scared. What happens now?

Living with Angina—not curing it. For most folks, that’s a tough diagnosis. There’s no pill to make it go away, only pills to manage the symptoms. Living with Angina, managing the pain and other symptoms, becomes a series of lifestyle choices. And often, lifestyle changes.

Over 4 million people live with angina and other heart disease complications every day. And so do their families. To treat the individual, you must treat the family, too.

We created the program Living With Angina to help educate patients and families when an individual first gets the diagnosis of heart disease. The patient has a multitude of questions, and so do family members, and not always the same questions. There are emotions to deal with too. Sometimes, spouses feel guilty. Should they have seen it coming? Done something to prevent it? There are intimate questions about how this may affect a patient’s physical relations with a spouse or a significant other.

In Living With Angina, we hear from medical personnel, patients, and patient’s spouses. It is a candid, revealing portrait of what life is like after the diagnosis. And how to go on living, with angina.