:5turbulent years to a stroke.

Hi and welcome to stroke and mirrors my memoir of having a stroke aged 36, but before that let’s fill some history inIt’s 2018 and I’m 32, relatively fit and healthy, certainly no known medical issues, one night in the summer I wake uop barely able to breathe and having a panic, I decideed it was likely hayfever which was bad at that time, the next day I got myself one of those rare emergency gp appointments but with a practicenurse , first thing was some basifc observations “Ben are you fit? She asked I briefly looked at my belly bloated from last nights beer “nah not very fit””so not a marathon runner?” I knew where this was going “your heart rate is very very low, I’m just going to grab a doctor and returning with a very nice GP, the pleasant doctor again asked about my sporting prowess or lack of it and asked if I felt ok. And was I busy? I was heading into work after for a surgical clinical list, he wanted to call an ambulance but I said no, work were already asking what time I would be in.

Instead he did a referral to cardiology, within a week I went to cardiology clinic had an ecg and sat with a doctor who said my heart rate was still very low and pushed a leaflet about pacemakers towards me then took me to coronary care to see a consultant who allowed me home but said I had to be aware of not over exerting myself and if I felt I’ll or faint to attend A&e and he would be seeing me in the future, msybe 6 days, 6 weeks or6 months but I would be back

I made it to 6 months toDecember, I’d had s very stresssful day in work jumped on a tram home which had a technical failure the stop before where my car was parked so I set off in the cold and rain to walk the last 2,miles to my car, after failing to find a taxi. While on the tram I had felt lightheaded but put it down to the stressful day

By the time I got home I could barely stand and laid in the living room floor holding on to the carpet for stability, I felt like I was sliding off the world rich ordered a domino’s pizza.

After it came he said “right that’s it. We’re off to A&e we went up and after observations showed a heart rate of 32 I was placed in the resus area with a defibrillator next to me, the next morning my cardiology consultant came to see me and said I’d be staying on coronary care for a while. I did 4 days before on the Friday I was released if I came back Monday to have a pacemaker fitted,,this went smoothly, made a quick positive chsbge to my health and never caused any issue, it went so smoothly thst during a follow up support call from the British heart foundation they asked me to join them on an episode of their podcast The Ticker Tapes to discuss having a pacemaker so young.

But there were questions about why it had happened I was referred to a specialist cardiology centre near by where I had genetic testing: echo’s and mris, it was eventually found to be a genetic inherited conduction disease. In late 2022 I got a call asking me to visit my pacemaker device clinic as it sent data every night to them and something was wrong, that something was Atrial Fibrillation, when the ekectric signal In the heart isn’t working properly I was soon seen again by the genetics team who said this was fixable with surgery and referred me to cardio thoracic surgery, likely for a vats (video asssted thorocoscopicsurgery known as maze procedure; I learned that all this was, essentially cardiac keyhole surgery by poking the camera and instruments between my ribs, it would likely be very successful and the surgeon had done lots of these cases in fact he told me no one else would be able to do the surgery in the uk, I did my research on it too and his name was on every paper

http://Now move to https://strokeandmirrors.uk/y2023/07/18/the-admission-surgery-and-