Interview HA27

Age at interview: 52

Age at diagnosis: 51

Brief Outline: Heart attack 2002, angioplasty and stent 2002. Current medication' aspirin, pravastatin

Background: Accountant (self-employed); Married, 2 children

He had severe chest pain and a tingling sensation in his right arm.

Well what happened there was, it was totally out of the blue, I was sitting down, I'd had breakfast, and I was just thinking about making a cup of coffee, and suddenly this sort of pain hit me. And initially I thought, well it might be indigestion or something but it went on and after, I would guess 10 or 15 seconds, it was so excruciating.

I'd never experienced a pain like this, it was just coming in waves, and it was lucky that my family who were about to leave the house for the day, hadn't. So they spotted fairly quickly and called an ambulance probably within two or three minutes dialled 999. And this pain I walked, I could still walk around, I tried to lie down and it wouldn't go away and basically it was so excruciating I was sort of screaming, and I think I probably realised I'd had a heart a heart attack. I had a sort of tingling sense in my right arm. 
 

He felt apprehensive that they might have another heart attack in the next few hours and unsure...

At that time, I was very nervous, because what they said was, that there was this chance of a repetition, within, the biggest risk of a repeat heart attack, I suppose it's like an earthquake, when you get the aftershocks, the biggest chance was in the next thirty days. So there was certainly that apprehension that you kept listening to your body for, and any sort of twinge you think, well is this another heart attack because having had that experience of a minor secondary one on the first day, was that happening?. So there was apprehension there. 

There was also, because it happened so quickly, just you begin to think ahead, well, what's going to happen? I'm aware that something major has happened, it's going to change one's lifestyle. So what's that going to mean? Being in hospital in a totally different environment, just suddenly taken away, it's not as if you'd say, you could prepare yourself. If you perhaps were going in for an operation or something in advance a certain date. 

You were just suddenly taken straight out of your environment and plonked in hospital. So there's all those things that to begin with it certainly, it's daunting I suppose is the way to, and also it's the sheer uncomfortableness of having all these monitors strapped to your body, which means that movement is pretty tricky and, also not really being able to get out of bed.

But, yeah I suppose you adjust, and therefore I found that probably within, that was the first, the first sort of 24, sort of 36 hours and then you got used to it.

He thought taking less exercise in the years leading up to his heart attack could have contributed.

It's very tricky seeing that I didn't, as I've said, I'd given up smoking fifteen years ago. I was certainly overweight, but I wouldn't say dramatically overweight. I said, I didn't have high blood pressure. Cholesterol was not a problem. Whether it's just years of bad living? 

The one thing which I wonder, because it's very interesting, the person who I did join at the rehab, I hadn't seen for a long time, was a former squash partner, who played regularly and I thought it was a strange coincidence both of us had a heart attack you know, within a month. 

And I just wonder whether, having taken a lot of exercise, being very energetic, playing squash at least twice a week for a considerable number of years, and then I just stopped, and not taking any exercise. Whether maybe the, you know, the body having been used to, and the heart having been used to sort of pumping around then suddenly it's not doing that, maybe that had some sort of contributory factor. I mean that's just my own personal feeling. 

When he started work soon after his heart attack it took a while to build up concentration and...

Being home, it was, sort of, I suppose slightly funny because I came home about a week before Christmas. So in a way you had Christmas as well to concentrate on. 

After that, I suppose I had this in the back of my mind there was this concern because working for myself and there was a, the particular work that I do, January I knew was going to be a busy month, but I found that I, when looking at it initially trying to sort of get back to work, I found that the concentration and the effort was very much, I had to take it very gingerly you know, maybe just sort of half an hour for one day, then it built up maybe an hour another day. 

Luckily, as I said, I had some relatives and friends to help. But it did take quite a long time to sort of build up sort of the mental stamina and sort of physical sort of stamina so as to get back into that. 

Minor illnesses worry his wife and family more than him.

At times, and I think it causes more concerns for my family, because in fact only just a couple of days ago, I suddenly had these funny sort of sensations of it was a sort of tingling and everything else like that but in fact it worked out it was food poisoning. And it was a sort of like a 24 hour bug and I knew that it didn't affect my chest, but again I knew there was something funny going on. 

But I think it causes more concern for the family that are thinking, is there something happening again? Whereas I think, if you know, you know, if you know your own body, then you think, no, no, no it's you know you, having experienced the excruciating pain of the first heart attack and to a lesser degree the second one I'd be able to tell if I had another heart attack, I'd know exactly what it was. 

His heart attack hasn't stopped him doing anything that he had done before.

Yes, I mean, I think if I was to look back, has anything has it actually stopped me doing things that I was doing before and I'd say no. 

I would say that life, life on the whole has returned to where it was beforehand, except that, aware that it's happened and therefore although it's in the back of your mind, it's not something that worries me, but one is just a little bit more circumspect, certainly as far as eating is concerned, and aware that one ought to take exercise. 

But as far as holidays are concerned, then we're still, you know, we're going on the holidays or that sort of leisure pattern that we did before.