Interview HF11

Age at interview: 80

Age at diagnosis: 75

Brief Outline: Angina began in 1992. Replacement aorta 1994. 1998/9 heart failure diagnosed. Has had asthma and arthritis for many years.

Background: Retired car service stores worker; widowed with 1 child.

He reflects on his childhood eating and smoking habits.

Well I don't know. They all say you shouldn't eat animal fat. Well as kids we always used to eat well. Dad had a big allotment, and we always had plenty of vegetables and that. I used to love to pour the fat at my vegetables, nice and wet. I hate a dry meal, so whether that had anything to do with it, because my dad died of heart trouble. And I used to put, like, this fat and that on my food. Whether that sort of started furring things up, I don't know. 

What about smoking and drinking?

Oh I smoked from about 12, I started having little puffs about 12 and then let's see..'56, 1960, I was coughing up and that all day long and that all smoking about 30-odd fags a day! 

 

Describes his daily diet and says he likes to have something alcoholic to help him sleep.

I make up my mind what to have for breakfast. Sometimes I'll have a cheese sandwich, other time I'll have egg and bacon, another time like this morning... jam on toast, you know I'm not fussy. Then lunch time I [coughs] usually I have a proper lunch, you know, meat, vegetables and what-not, usually have potatoes, at least two, two vegetables. I never eat sweet, sometimes I'll have a chocolate afterwards, and perhaps I shouldn't say this, but a couple of glasses of hock, helps it!  [laughs] That's my excuse anyway, helps it down! 

And then in the afternoon, if I have more than one glass I usually end up there for an hour! There you are, snoring! And then I've nothing else to eat at all until nine o'clock at night. And I have a friend I go to visit, and I usually have either three or four crispbreads with cheese or bully beef or something on, and a couple of snifters of brandy - medicine - and I usually come home about ten o'clock and, sometimes I get a call out in the kitchen, for the bottle and have another one before I go to bed. I'm a naughty boy really, but, well, what else is there at 80 years old! [laughs] Well you've got no other enjoyment! 

But I don't drink beer now hardly - but I prefer a little snifter, a smaller glass. And apart from that I'm fairly happy.