I dismissed it as stress, but I had a serious heart condition

Bryony Gordon attributed her heart palpitations to too much partying in her youth, then to perimenopause. Photo / Giulia Bertelli, Unsplash

OPINION:

About six months ago, I collapsed in the kitchen whilst making my daughter’s breakfast. I am not a person prone to fainting fits, so it took me by surprise, not least because it was accompanied by a sudden spike in my resting heart rate, my smart watch informing me it had gone from 52 beats per minute to 170 in what felt like a split second. I came to on the floor, with a butter knife in my hand. All I remember thinking was: thank God I wasn’t carving a roast.

My husband, who is infinitely more sensible than me, insisted I go and see a doctor. I thought that was a bit dramatic, and that it was probably just stress, or hormones (when you are a woman, you put everything down to stress or hormones). He looked at me as if I was mad, which, now I come to think about it, is how he looks at me about 90 per cent of the time.

“You just collapsed doing nothing more pressing than spreading peanut butter on toast,” he tutted. “If that doesn’t constitute a trip to the GP, I don’t know what does.” I thought about reminding him of the time I went into labour and he suggested I take a paracetamol and go back to bed, but thought better of it.

Confession: I’ve had palpitations on and off for decades. In my twenties I attributed them to too much partying, and then in my thirties, when I stopped partying, I attributed them to perimenopause. The GP seemed to agree that it was probably all a bit of a fuss about nothing, but referred me for a routine ECG “just in case”. Just as I was about to leave, he asked me if I had ever heard of something called a panic attack. I left feeling a bit stupid – a mental health campaigner unable to differentiate between panic and proper palpitations.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by bryonygordon (@bryonygordon)

On the morning of the ECG, I fainted again, but, putting it down to panic, I went out and ran five kilometres of hill runs. That would kill the anxiety! Then I trudged off to a medical centre a short walk away, and felt my heart flutter a bit, though nothing out of the ordinary. I was sure I was about to be reassured, and diagnosed with a bad case of nerves. But after the nurse had stuck the pads of the ECG to my chest, her face changed quite dramatically.

“Are you feeling OK?” she asked.

“I’m absolutely fine,” I said, truthfully. The flutters in my chest were nothing compared to what I had experienced that morning.

“You’re in atrial fibrillation,” she said. “We’re going to need to send you to hospital.”

Some nice paramedics came and took me to hospital in an ambulance (how embarrassing!), where I was fitted with a heart monitor to wear for a few days (is this really necessary?), and told I had an arrhythmia that put me at increased risk of stroke (err, excuse me?). “Are you sure it’s not stress, or the menopause, or just entirely in my mind?” I asked the consultant, who wrote out a prescription for some medication and told me that no, I had a proper heart condition. He explained that A-fib, as it’s known in the trade, means that blood doesn’t always pump properly through your body, sometimes pooling in the organ and causing clots. I was lucky, he said – many people only find out they have it after they’ve had a stroke. “Lucky me!” I beamed, slightly stunned.

For the next few weeks, I was convinced I was going to drop dead at any moment. After countless scans and tests, I have discovered that there is nothing structurally wrong with my heart, that my health is otherwise robust, and that I have what is known as “idiopathic” atrial fibrillation – which basically means they have no idea what has caused it. Taking no chances, I have knocked coffee on the head entirely, packed in the cheeky three fags a day, taken up CrossFit, and realised that the most likely thing to set off an A-fib episode is a meal containing a lot of salt (or a packet of cheese and onion crisps).

I have since discovered that A-fib is remarkably common. Last week, the British Heart Foundation released data that showed there had been an “astonishing” 50 per cent rise in cases in 10 years, up to 1.5 million. The increase is thought to be because of improved awareness of the condition, due to the huge risks of blood clot attached to it. But the BHF estimates that 270,000 people remain undiagnosed and unaware they have A-fib.

They may well be people like me, who have dismissed their concerns as stress, or hormones, or been fobbed off by their GP. If you’re reading this, and you think you fall into this category, I would urge you to look into it properly and find out for sure. It’s all treatable, and if your doctor won’t listen, you can always buy a smart watch with an ECG attached, which I have done since.

I’ve come to see A-fib as my body’s way of telling me to look after myself – when the palpitations strike up, it’s time for an early night and an extra litre of water. And while I had always lived in terror of having something wrong with my heart, strangely, it feels like the best thing that could have happened to me.