At the beginning of 2021 I had a heart attack. I almost felt wrong as I dialed 999 and then walked up the stairs to the main entrance of my building to wait for the ambulance to arrive. It didn’t seem desperate.
But five months later I had to call 999 again after waking up in the night with difficulty breathing. The way I try to describe it to people is like waterboarding someone, that’s what it’s like. My lungs were full and no matter what I did, I couldn’t breathe, so I called for help.
I was taken to the hospital and from then on things became a bit of a blur. I remember lying in the hospital and tubes and wires and everything else coming out of me as the doctor leaned over me. He said, “We’ve found out what it is: heart failure.”
It’s a terrible name, but it just means your heart isn’t very efficient. I stayed in the hospital for about a week until my breathing improved. I felt almost normal. A few weeks after being discharged, I returned to the hospital to see a cardiologist.
I knew so little about this condition that the first question I asked was, will this help me or is this something that will be with me for the rest of my life? The latter, of course, took place.
When I got home, I started Googling “heart failure.” Oh my god, this is so scary. You had five years to live and so on. A few weeks later I had my annual visit with my cardiologist and it was explained that I had heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. [HFpEF – a complex clinical syndrome resulting from the impaired ability of the heart to cope with the metabolic needs of the body, resulting in breathlessness, fatigue, and fluid retention]. To be honest, I’ve never heard of this.
In short, the problem is with the pump. There are two main types: my disease and heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), which means the heart is full but cannot pump blood out. With my HFpEF my heart can’t fill enough.
A normal heart filling with blood is like inflating a balloon. With my illness, it’s like doing the same with a heating pad. It is a ossified heart that is not filled enough. Then they told me that they couldn’t provide medical care or medicine or anything like that. For HFrEF, there is a treatment called Four Pillars of Medicine that can solve all of these problems.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t really crazy. At the time I was involved with the charity Pumping Marvelous, which supported people with heart failure and learned a lot from them. I also came across them just by Googling while looking for some support for people like me and I have been collaborating with them ever since.
Nice this year [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] approved a special drug called dapagliflozin, made by AstraZeneca and also known as Forxiga, to treat adults with symptoms of chronic heart failure with preserved or slightly reduced ejection fraction, which is actually quite good because it also helps with my diabetes. This month, Nice also recommended expanding access to empagliflozin, also known as Jardiance and made by Eli Lilly, as another treatment option for people with HFrEF or HFpEF. An estimated 150,000 people are eligible for treatment with empagliflozin, which should be started on the advice of a heart failure specialist.
The problem with HFpEF is that many people who suffer from it also have multiple underlying conditions. I have suffered from type 2 diabetes for about 40 years. I had both bladder cancer and atrial flutter. [a type of abnormal heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, which occurs when a short circuit in the heart causes the upper chambers (atria) to pump very rapidly]. I took hundreds of medications every day to get them all under control and everything seemed fine.
Last October, I challenged myself to run 100 miles in a month. I did it in 20 days. Unfortunately, heart failure is a chronic condition and has now gotten to the point where I only need to walk 200 meters to the local store. Added to this is fatigue.
When I tell people, “I’m tired,” they think I’m going to sleep, but I’m tired, deeply tired. It doesn’t affect the brain, so I can still laugh and have fun.
I live in a nursing home. This is an apartment building for the elderly. In fact, there is something wrong with everyone. Looking back, I realize that I clearly had symptoms of heart failure that I simply attributed to my age, but which I should have gotten checked out sooner. Now I think like this: I will beat cancer to beat everything.
One of the symptoms was mild shortness of breath, which I attributed to either my first heart attack or cancer treatment. I used to smoke – 20 a day, not excessively, but too much – so I can blame that, but it’s one of the first symptoms of HFpEF. And swelling occurs due to the accumulation of fluid in the body, which, in turn, leads to shortness of breath.
If I had known, I probably would have gone to the doctor sooner and it might have made a difference, but I just don’t know. “What if” will solve all the world’s problems, right?
I actually started taking Forxiga before it was approved. My cardiologist told me about this new medication that will definitely help control my diabetes and also help with my heart failure. It was originally used as a treatment for diabetes, but they found that people with heart failure who took it survived 25 percent longer than people who didn’t take it. It meant a lot to me.
Since then my illness has worsened. I am no longer the same person I was a year ago. It made my time after diagnosis better and easier. It’s hard to focus on one thing when two or three things are wrong, but I’m not complaining.
I am passionate about raising awareness about heart failure, an invisible disability. On bad days I don’t leave the front door, but on good days you walk out and the people you meet or talk to wonder what I did with my heart. You just can’t figure out what’s wrong with you – and that’s actually the whole problem. This also affects the psyche.
My wife Val died of a brain tumor in 2005 and I have lived alone since then. I was working as a teacher at the time, but the shock was huge. About four weeks passed between her diagnosis and death. After that I simply couldn’t work anymore. It was a stressful job. I was offered early retirement due to health reasons, and I accepted.
I have good days and bad days. Given my condition, there are fewer good days than bad ones. There are a lot of things that I simply couldn’t do before, like tidying and tidying the house, which is too much work for me.
However, I have good friends here in Leighton Buzzard. We have all these little things, but we are a real community. Shopping is within walking distance so I have everything I need. My two boys are nearby: one is 15 minutes away in one direction, the other is 15 minutes away in the other direction. They are there all the time and we talk every day. They come, so it’s as simple as that.
If anyone has the symptoms I had, see a doctor immediately. And check out the Pumping Marvelous website for lots of tips on managing your health, finances etc. The moral support I received from colleagues within the charity was fantastic. They know it, they understand it, they have experienced it. And it helps a lot when you face your problems and know that you are not alone.
For more information about Pumping Marvelous, visit https://pumpingmarvelous.org/.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.