Cathy McMullan, a Civil Servant from Bangor, knows all too well the dangers of high blood pressure. After receiving one of our Well Checks she was alerted that she had high blood pressure which wasn’t improving, and subsequently discovered she had suffered what doctors believed to be a silent heart attack.
Cathy recalls, “I’d had a health check with NICHS through my work before and my blood pressure had never been high but this time there were lots of red warning lights coming up throughout my ‘Well Check’, including my blood pressure. I was a little overweight at the time, not getting enough exercise and relaxing with a drink most evenings.”
After her health check, Cathy resolved to make positive changes to her life, and she did, losing one and a half stone (9.52 KG). When our health promotion team returned after 12 weeks for a follow-up health check, Cathy was pleased to find she had greatly improved in many areas – but strangely her blood pressure had actually gone up. “The top figure (systolic) was high, but the bottom figure (diastolic) was off the scale!”
Cathy continues, “It made no sense, and it bothered me. I went to the open surgery at my GP’s the next day. I had an ECG, but instead of being told I was fine, I was kept there. The GP was called back in and started asking what I would call ‘heart attack’ type questions. But I hadn’t experienced any noticeable symptoms such as chest pains; maybe a little indigestion but nothing noteworthy. However, the ECG results were indicating that I’d had a heart attack in the previous few weeks.”
Cathy was immediately put on medication and in hospital follow-up tests showed she had a slightly leaky heart valve.
In the end, Cathy says, “The doctors can’t conclusively say whether I did or did not have a heart attack. But the leaky valve indicates that this is a possibility as that damage can be caused by a heart attack.”
Cathy says, “Without that well check, I would not have had the motivation to make the lifestyle changes I did. And if I hadn’t made those changes and seen the results, the lack of improvement in my blood pressure would not have been obvious. I would have had no idea that I was at risk of or indeed had had a heart attack.”
“My message to everyone is to get checked. Know your blood pressure and your cholesterol. A doctor would not have picked me out as a likely candidate for a heart attack and yet look what happened. If it hadn’t been for Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke and having that well check, I might never have known. Thanks to them now, most importantly, doctors will continue to monitor my heart with regular echocardiograms in the future”.
