Trevor's second attack
Trevor had just got back home from a holiday
in France. He went to bed, and woke up two weeks later in
hospital.
His pulse had stopped in the night, and his wife Jackie had to
resuscitate him all by herself, helped along by the ambulance
dispatcher talking her through it.
It was very difficult for Trevor to come to terms with
everything that had happened. He'd gone into a
medically-induced coma and had several operations
to help him pull through. He was "devastated".
"I was a very
active person before, I had a very full on job. I enjoyed my
work and the immediate thing that came to mind was 'Oh God,
what’s it going to do to my work'."
When Trevor was discharged
from hospital he was given an info pack with lots of reading
material and among it were booklets
from the BHF.
They focused on recovering, and moving
forward: "That helped me understand my illness and that was the
time when I learned to stop fearing it.
"I relied on
the BHF-funded heart failure nurses even more than the doctors and
consultants."
Ultimately, what got him through was
the support he received from his wife Jackie.
"My wife was
the single thing that kept me going. It makes you think how do
people survive when they don’t have that support? It's incredible
isn’t it!"
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