Interview HF25

Age at interview: 82

Age at diagnosis: 81

Brief Outline: Angina for many years. Heart failure angina for many years (unsure when it started). Heart failure diagnosed 2002.

Background: Retired technical officer; married 1 child.

He lost interest in his hobbies for a time but felt better once his medication was changed.

Well actually it happened last October. I just began to feel that I had something wrong with me, I didn't know what obviously. Very weary, strange for me, I wasn't sleeping very well. Normally I go to bed and you know I'm lucky if I wake up myself in the morning but I just wasn't sleeping at all well. And it just proceeded to get worse and worse and worse. 

I called in the doctor and I'm afraid I didn't, there's something I find very strange, I didn't appreciate that I had heart problems. He didn't seem to spell it out to me although maybe I should have known that I was taking remedies for. My main trouble is that my heart is not pumping fast enough and even, well just a few weeks ago, when I had my iron done at the hospital before they started the operation they checked all those things, and they said, 'Oh it's very low'. And they went so far as to phone up the surgery here to see what they said about it. And then again, about the same time we had our annual health check and the nurse, she commented so I'm a wee bit worried that my heart is still, you know I might want to go a bit faster! But the difference in me now to 6 months ago is just fantastic. Well I lost interest in everything. Normally I'm mad about cars, motor sport, caravans. I've got books come in every month and I just stopped reading them. You know, it sounds strange, although I didn't realise it was happening very much, did I? [looks at wife] .