My heart felt like a leaden weight tucked behind my ribcage, and I could feel its torturous heavy beats in my skull. Most days my mother, disabled and in pain, had to travel a mile to get my infant daughter from a school less than 300 metres from my front door.
By this point, I couldn’t leave my house at all. It took me that long to admit to myself, and my family, that I didn’t have late-onset asthma, or severe heartburn. That I had something seriously wrong with me, and this time it couldn’t be cut away. Not fear of looking stupid, but fear that my suspicions were correct. I went from being healthy, to being very, very ill. The next days turned into weeks, and weeks became months. Well enough to tell myself I had been overreacting I just needed to calm down at parties – a thought that tied in well with my resolution to live more healthily. So I slept, and when I woke up in the early evening, I felt a bit better. I never truly believed that, at not even 30 years old, I could actually be having a heart attack. I rolled over and breathed slowly, forcing myself calm until sleep took me away from the pain. I just needed to sleep it off and I would be fine. Understandably, he laughed and told me I had a hangover. I told my husband I thought I was having a heart attack. As the pain in my breastbone increased, and my arm felt as though it had been punched until it was dead, I began to realise something was wrong. It was a sickness which left me panting and breathless. I felt sick, but it wasn’t a normal sort of nausea. It had been a fun party – I never claimed it was a classy one. There had been a lot of laughter, music, and cheap wine. So when I woke up sick, I put it down to the excesses of the night before.
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