Why had I not heard of this before?

This story has a lesson in it, so bear with me. 

Saturday night, June 24, Den woke me up about 10 pm saying he was having chest pains and needed to go to the hospital. Trying to process this I went into the kitchen and gave him four baby aspirins (those equal one adult aspirin), which is standard advice for possible heart attacks.

Then I called 911. I was told to give him the aspirin. I assured her we already did that. She said, but did he chew it up? Uh, no, forgot that part. So she said give him another four baby ones. 

Meanwhile Den kept pacing around and I kept saying he needed to lie down. 

He said it felt like someone was standing on his chest.

The paramedics were here in about 10 minutes. 

They hooked him up to the monitors, and gave him nitroglycerin. 

They gave him 2 more doses on the way to the hospital. Soon after, the pain disappeared.

Did lots of labs, X-rays, etc and then announced, no heart attack, and he could go home. It was 3:30 am. 

Diagnosed him with non cardiac chest pain. 

But here's where it gets interesting.

Two days later he had a follow up visit with the on call Kaiser doctor, who was also a retired Navy doctor of 20 years. After reviewing his tests and talking to both of us, he thinks Den probably had a blood clot that was getting ready to cause a heart attack and the nitroglycerin dissolved it, and pushed it through, and he was fine.  

Then, a few more days after that, he had an appt with his Primary care doctor. She agreed with the conclusion of the retired Navy doctor, but she went on to explain further. She said the aspirin does one thing and nitro does another. The nitro opens up the vessels and the aspirin dissolves the clot. That is what she believes saved him.

The moral of his story is:

If someone has chest pains, or other symptoms that could be cardiac, call an ambulance. Don't waste time trying to drive the person to ER. 

Also have them chew up 325 mg of aspirin (or 4 baby ones). Get it working. 

The medics who arrive will start the nitro right away, and timing could make all the difference. 

I'm convinced it did in Den's case. 

Side note: Den's Primary care doctor, also said the nitro can be administered every 5 min by the medics, if needed. That's a lot of hands on care one could get before even getting to the hospital. 

Okay, I can't tell anyone else what to do, but this is our agenda should it happen again.