A HEART ATTACK or STROKE
is the result of problems in your veins and arteries.

Have you ever thought what it would be like to have a heart attack? You might think you have to feel seriously unwell for a time before it happens and then you collapse in agony with your hands on your chest. This is how it is often portrayed on TV but it can happen in other ways.

Imagine:-

You go to work as normal on a Friday morning. You are feeling a bit tired but put this down to the fact that you have been working long hours lately, you also have an intermittent aching in the middle of your back, just below your neck, which you put down to the remnants of the stiff neck you had last week.

You follow the usual routines for a Friday morning and the day is progressing quite normally except for the troublesome ache in your back which is a bit stronger now. By early afternoon you are preparing for the weekly meeting you chair to discuss and prepare for the following week's production program. Everything is fine apart from the ache in your back, which is stronger now and becoming more frequent. It's so strong that you need to stand, stretch your arms and change your position quite frequently. Your colleagues notice you're a bit distracted today (they tell you this weeks later) but apart from this the meeting passes normally.

After completing some outstanding paperwork, and having a walk around the factory to see that things are running normally you decide to go home for some dinner and relaxation, in the hope that the ache across your shoulder blades will pass with some rest. It is about 6-30pm. You're obviously not as hungry as you thought because you can't finish your dinner. You decide to watch TV with your family. After a while you go into another room, your continuous shuffling is stopping the family from watching the TV.

It is about 9pm when things take a turn for the worse, as well as the ache which is now stronger and continuous, you begin to sweat heavily, you've got a very strong ache down the left side of your neck and through your jaw, you also feel very nauseous. By this time you're very frightened, not knowing what is happening to you. You start to be scared it may be a heart attack. You make your way to the bathroom to rinse your face in cold water, now sensing that your arms feel strangely heavy. When you look in the mirror and see the grey and pasty face looking back you shout your wife to call the doctor. You now feel convinced it is a heart attack.

After examining you, your doctor says he is not certain what is wrong but he thinks you're too young to be having a heart attack. He says he will take you to the surgery and check you out on the brand new ECG machine that has only recently been donated to the surgery. While driving you to the surgery the doctor hands you a spray and tells you to spray it under your tongue, you do and as if by magic the pain in your back almost disappears, but only for a few minutes. As soon as the trace starts to show on the ECG machine your doctor runs down the corridor and rings for an ambulance, he has just had it confirmed that you are having a heart attack. (he told me a couple of weeks later). But you still don't know. You cling to the fact that your doctor said you are too young to have a heart attack.

You are examined again on arrival at the hospital, by this time you are becoming a bit grumpy, since the pain in your back has returned with a vengeance and the hospital doctor tells you they don't have any of the magical spray your doctor gave you. At this point the doctor tells you that a bed is being prepared for you in the intensive care unit and you are suffering quite a major heart attack.

Shortly after arriving in intensive care you are all wired up and given an injection of a brand new "Clot-Busting" drug that according to the nurse has only been in use at the hospital for a few days. You don't know how long it takes because your sense of time seems to have deserted you, but the ache in your back slowly reduces. Later in the night, the whole thing starts up again and you are aware of an alarm going off somewhere, you can hear the sound of people running towards you. The nursing staff explain that the return of the discomfort is normal and should pass. After what seems like ages the ache as all but gone. You are totally exhausted but afraid to go to sleep, fearing that you may not wake up.

After what feels to be a very long time you slowly become aware that dawn is breaking. As the daylight gets stronger, the ache in your back has almost gone and you are still alive, you slowly begin to allow yourself to think that you might have made it.

I found out a few days later that of the people who find themselves in intensive care roughly 50% don't make it. It's a strange feeling to lie in a bed knowing that roughly half the people who occupied it before you weren't able to walk away from it.

The experience above, that I asked you to imagine, happened to me. It totally changed my life and the lives of my family, it destroyed my career and threw a very large burden onto my wife Gillian. Thanks to Gillian we managed. And HEY! I'm still here. Although this happened to me 20 years ago I can remember it as though it were only yesterday. It took a long time to get over it and even longer to recover. I'll tell you about the recovery phase later if you are interested, but the experience I have described is why we are seriously into prevention and reducing the risk of anything like this happening to us again. Gillian told me after I was discharged that she had been called to one side in the emergency department and told "I was having a major heart attack but if I could make it through the night I stood a good chance.

Although I didn't know what they were at the time, if you feel any of the symptoms I described above contact your doctor immediately. You don't have to have all of them at once. If, however, you have had no symptoms but have concerns about your risk-level of a heart attack you might like to have an on-line check-up with a very experienced Doctor.