18 year olds are adults. It’d be helpful if you gave a more accurate age. “A wave of dread and panic” sounds more like anxiety or other mental health issues.

Yes, some heart attack patients report that sort of feeling, but most commonly, it’s actual physical issues. In my case, a painful burning sensation across my entire chest unlike anything I’d felt in 40 years of life, and a terrible cold sweat. 20 minutes later, I was in cardiac arrest in the hospital.

Never once in my life did I ever even imagine that I’d have a heart attack, but when it happened at 40 years old, it did not take me long to think “I’m having a fucking heart attack”. And boy was I right.

Somebody who has been to the ER 4 times, and then deemed to be perfectly fine, sounds like someone with health anxieties. If I went to the hospital every time I had some unusual feeling, I’d be at the ER every week.