I was in between careers, having retired from the police service nine months earlier and about to start a new job in Cyber Security. During my time off we had been on some fabulous holidays and I had returned to the gym. I had lost some weight and felt fitter. Not super fit but certainly more comfortable, having dropped a size in trousers. I had also increased my time helping my wife, Tamara, with her horse, Tommy (pictured), who was stabled nearby. Everything was great.
The morning of December 7 was cold with a heavy frost and sometime that morning, after my wife had gone to work, I received a text message that Tommy had found his way into another horse’s field. The fences were old and I knew that a lot of the fenceposts were rotten below ground level. Either the posts had given up, or Tommy had given them a nudge. Either way the fence was down and, although it wasn’t a problem that Tommy was in another field, I decided to pop to the stables and fix the fence.
I only know it as a ‘Fencepost Bodger’. It’s a heavy tool made from a metal tube with handles. The idea is you put it over the fencepost and use the handles to ram the post into the ground. Four posts were down, and finding some newer ones I set about repairing the fence, ramming the posts into the hard frozen ground with the ‘bodger’. It was a struggle on my own but, determined to succeed I carried on and reconstructed that part of the fence.
About an hour later, having left the stables, I started to feel ill. I was shopping at the time and began to feel hot as if I had a temperature, almost flu like. I also felt nauseous and my chest was painful. I passed it off as indigestion and got in my car to head home, but I suddenly starting to feel worse. I actually muttered under my breath, “I really don’t feel well.”
As I negotiated a roundabout I noticed my left arm was heavy and painful. Then my lower jaw felt like I had been punched. My head started to pound. I had been first aid trained and I recognised the symptoms. I was having a heart attack!
Luckily, I was about to drive back past the stables, so instead of continuing, I pulled in knowing there would be someone to help. Two other horse owners were there and one of them called me an ambulance whilst they wrapped me in horse blankets to keep me warm.
Ambulance, A&E, cardiology, angiogram, SCAD...
Everyone that I came into contact with from the NHS was fantastic and I felt very well looked after. SCAD was explained to me after the angiogram showed a bruise in my LAD artery and it was considered likely that it had been caused by over exertion. I understood that SCAD was a relatively unknown condition and I was happy to volunteer to help with SCAD research later meeting Dr Adlam at Leicester. He told me I was ‘rare’ which put a smile on my face as I had often considered myself ‘decidedly average’.
But then came the anxiety.
When I had initially left hospital, I felt great. Almost successful that I had survived. But as time went by, I started to lie awake at night wondering if I was going to have another one. Would the next one be fatal? I started having pins and needles in my hands whilst in bed and I was struggling to concentrate with most things I did. A few months after the episode, we were going abroad. I normally enjoy flying, but on the morning of departure I began feeling out of breath, tense and nervous. I also started to feel like this with upcoming social gatherings and certain work environments. I had gone from a confident outgoing person to someone full of worry. I had anxiety.
On occasions I can recognise the trigger and I have started to look at coping mechanisms, like controlled deep breathing when I feel tense, and I certainly don’t rush around like I used to. I’ve never been a heavy drinker but now I drink even less and rarely alone. Workwise I speak to my Director about my anxiety and the company offer support groups. I find talking is a great help, whether it’s about my heart attack, SCAD, or the anxiety.
Sometimes I feel fantastic but, occasionally, I feel like I just want to stay at home and avoid the world. I realise that I have to accept this in order to help deal with it.