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Heart failureArrow
Aged 61-70
Interview HF08  

Interview HF08

Age at Interview: 69
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 67
Background: Retired secretary; widowed with 2 children.
Brief outline:Cardiac arrest 2001. Dilated cardiomyopathy 2001. Heart failure 2001.


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Describes how it felt when she had oedema that led to a cardiac arrest.

 



July 2001 it was quite a warm summer and I was suffering from breathlessness and  I thought it was because of the heat of the day and my husband had been ill for several years, about 8 years and I was looking after him and I just felt that my feeling of unwell was due to the distress there. But on the Sunday morning I woke up and I felt quite ill, I felt a sort of crackly sound like (laughing) crunching of crystal (crunchy noises being made) sounds and I thought that was silly because I had been in bed and had a good night's sleep and I woke up, and said to my son I'd like to be taken into a hospital to the Accident and Emergency department because I didn't feel well, which he thought was amusing because I... you don't just go for that reason. And we did, we went in, and whilst I was there I took ill, and the cardiac arrest you know, happened. At the time I thought the pain was just like an angina pain, but there was obviously more involved because I felt this fluidness... in my lungs, and I had a spell of vomiting, which was a frothy fluid, and blood which was the lining of the lungs. And at the time I didn't quite understand it, now I do know and can appreciate, it was the oedema which was the lungs filling up with water and that is a feeling of drowning in your own... within your own body which is rather frightening.  
Heart failure
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