At the end of May 2023 my family and I went away for a few days to our caravan in West Wales. It was a perfectly normal Sunday morning and all of a sudden I started to get a strange sensation in my chest. My husband John was chatting to me about something and I remember saying to him something like “I can’t talk right now something weird is happening” while I held my chest. He quickly realised that something was wrong and we tried to work out what might be happening.

I consistently have described the sensation as “it felt like something was sat on me” right in the middle of my chest, extremely heavy and not easing at all whatever position I was in or what I was doing. Then my left arm started to feel funny and “like it didn’t really belong to me” and I thought suddenly that something might be seriously wrong. I knew that central chest pain plus left arm was bad news, so we rang 999. When the paramedics arrived I felt like a total idiot and a time waster coz the sensations had eased and I was lying in bed and “didn’t look like someone who was having a heart attack” but dutifully went to hospital to be checked over just to be safe. They told me I needed some blood tests to be absolutely certain my heart hadn’t been under stress.

This was the beginning of a 10 day stay in hospital during which I repeatedly told everyone that I was 36, pretty healthy, didn’t smoke or drink, no history of cardiac issues and that there wasn’t any significant history in the family either. I was in cardiac units with people more than twice my age and away from my young children (aged 3 and 18 months at the time) for the longest I’d ever been, plus wondering whether something was going on that could ultimately take me away from them for good. All sorts of possibilities were mentioned and I had so many medications, but had to wait to have an angiogram to check definitively what was going on with my heart.

This was eventually done on day 8 and the staff told me I’d had something called a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, or SCAD. All I really heard I’ll admit is that they wanted me to stay in the hospital another few days and I just burst into tears, which is what I’d done most days since being in as it was so distressing being away from the children. Once I was back in the unit my Mum hit google and we found our way to BeatSCAD. The information, resources and immediate support was just incredible and a genuine relief to start to understand a little bit of what was happening and where we needed to go from here. We also came to realise though that what had happened to me was still quite rare as it is being actively researched and answers being sought out as to why it happens and what can be done to prevent or predict when it might happen a scary thing to come to terms with at 36 with two children under 4 years old.

Now I’m focussing on my recovery and getting back to some fitness, hence my decision to sign up to a 10k race in May 2024! It’ll be just 10 days before my 1 year Scadiversary, so I’m sure that emotions will be running high on the day. I’ve got a lovely team of friends willing to help me on the day, both with fundraising and with getting me around the course so will keep everyone posted as to our progress along the way.

For now, if you can spare a little money towards our fundraising goal I would be forever grateful, and your money will go directly towards supporting patients like myself and finding answers and new treatments to combat this condition.

Thank you all!

Kathryn xxx

Some information on SCAD from BeatSCAD themselves:

SCAD is a serious heart condition which is striking healthy women and men... people who you probably wouldn't think would be at risk of having a heart attack. When SCAD strikes, it is life-changing for the patient and their loved ones. SCAD can be fatal. It is critical that we find out what causes SCAD.

Read patient stories here: http://beatscad.org.uk/scad-stories/

SCAD survivors are supported by an incredible team of researchers in Leicester at the Glenfield Hospital & NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, led by Dr David Adlam (https://scad.lcbru.le.ac.uk/).

Beat SCAD is a patient-led charity that launched in 2015 to raise awareness of SCAD, support SCAD patients and their families, and raise funds for research to find answers about this condition.

Thank you for your support!