Health SOS
The best health advice for you and your family
I thought I had indigestion after a takeaway, so why was my doctor so concerned?
I flopped down on the sofa, belly filled with takeaway kebab. ‘I’m so tired, I’m heading to bed,’ I said to my daughter Eleanor.
But a few hours later I woke in a cold sweat, my stomach churning.
It felt like indigestion so I took antacids but they provided little relief, so I decided to spend the weekend in bed, chalking it up to a dodgy kebab.
On Sunday I forced myself into the shower but I noticed a tingling sensation in my arms and I felt breathless.
So next day, I headed to the doctor’s where I had an ECG to check that my heart was OK.
‘It could be a stomach ulcer,’ the doctor said, ‘but really we think you’re having a heart attack.’
‘I’ll just take the stomach ulcer, if that’s OK,’ I joked, but the doctor didn’t crack a smile.
‘You need to get to hospital now,’ she said. In hospital I was quizzed on my symptoms before being blue-lighted to the Royal Papworth in Cambridge, a specialist cardiac hospital. There, I underwent an angioplasty with cardiologists inserting three stents in my heart, before recovering in critical care for four days.
I began a 12-week cardio rehab course which aided my physical recovery, but my mental recovery was tougher.
Since my heart attack, the world had become a scary place. I feared falling asleep in case I didn’
