Hi Shazdebos
My husband was 66. He was always the one in the family to urge everyone to exercise more. He cycled everywhere ( it was his passion even spent Thursday afternoons teaching children to cycle) and did circuit training twice a week. At the beginning of last year he went to the doctors as he appeared to have poor circulation in his hands after exercising due to this, he was referred to the cardiac clinic but was deemed non urgent. Covid resulted in non urgent appointments being cancelled and even when he did get the appointment all the routine tests were not done on the same day again due to the covid backlog As nothing showed up ( which probably would have done if he’d had the exercise ECG) he was told to carry on as normal. At the meeting with the consultant after Phil’s death, she said her biggest regret was not telling him to not cycle!
Sorry you asked how old my husband was and got a long winded reply! I
have grown up children family and friends who offer me support which I’m so grateful for.
I don’t know if it’s mentioned or acceptable on this site but if you or anyone needs practical support ie sorting out all the sadmin stuff (financial etc) I feel, unfortunately, I’ve become an expert! Nothing absolutely nothing has been straightforward
Sending my thoughts and hugs
Thank you for your reply & so sorry for the loss of your Husband too…. seems so many ‘fit people’ who exercise regularly, look after themselves & ‘least expected’ are passing away far too early with undiagnosed heart issues not taken seriously. I think Cardiologists ‘perceptions of people are wrongly judged’ from my Husband’s experience…they look at their physique from the ‘outside’ & don’t consider what’s happening on the ‘inside’ or medical notes in front of them.
COVID has ruined/taken so many lives & the NHS/Government need to improve this massively going forward.
I never thought I would be a widower at 52 years of age & my poor girls of 14 & 21 not growing up with their Dad by their side….we miss him so much, but grateful I see him in the girls everyday at least & had the most amazing memorable 25 years of my life with him by my side….still feel so robbed though & do ask ‘why us’ like I’m sure everyone else also questions….
Take care & thanks again for sharing your story, as this site has helped in seeing how many others are all suffering same grief & pain
Thankyou for your message my dear. Your husband was pretty young though. At least our girls have grown & flown though they are still grieving. My husband had a bad fall 5 months before though when people start falling, it is a sign. Our dearest friend was a complete shock. The post mortem showed that the smaller arteries to his heart had collapsed. I don’t think much the NHS could have been done much about that. Don’t give up-you never know!
Life is so unfair my daughters are grown up married with children but have taken it very hard every day is a struggle I am sure it will get easier with time
The hardest thing is the lack of warning and the fact he could not have been more fit or health conscious
My thoughts are with you take care of yourselves
Hello,
I don’t know whether any of the people who’ve contributed to this thread are still active on this site, but I wanted to share my experience: my fit, slim, active, benevolent dad had just turned 76. He wasn’t on any medication. His blood pressure was always normal. But he had a cough. We all referred to it as a winter cough, but I now think that it was probably present year-round. Dad had many appointments in primary care over the course of 3 years but they stopped around a diagnosis of COPD. Dad had never smoked. I had no confidence in the practice where my dad was going, and he was never seen by a GP, only a ‘trainee clinical practitioner’. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that a cough (he would cough up frothy stuff, too) could ever be linked to the heart. What it is, the heart isn’t receiving its full complement of blood and so it’s not able to do it’s job properly, and hence some of the cells that it would be pumping out around the body flow back into the lungs.
It does seem as though this is often misdiagnosed, as it happened to my ex-boyfriend’s dad and to a friend’s dad.
I wrote to British Heart Foundation saying that something needs to be done about it, to increase education. Everyone had it drummed it into them about a new dry continuous cough for flipping covid, but what about a new, wet, progressive cough with frothy sputum that occurs on exertion and when lying down, once a chest infection and COPD have been ruled out.
They didn’t seem very interested in my correspondence. They just said that after COPD a cardiac cause should be investigated, and that a wet cough with no other symptoms isn’t very common. It doesn’t matter how common it is!! If it saves one life (or three, in my personal experience) then it’s worth drumming the message home!!
PS @Seaneen do you think that a more fitting title for this thread would be something like missed symptoms of ischemic heart disease?
It is an angiogram that is needed, not an ECG. It sounds like the cardiac nurse at BHF was as disinterested as the one I spoke to. 