'When our sons were a few years younger, we’d get to the park and I’d call, “Who can beat me?” and we’d all set off running. 'I’ve always been active. 'Growing up in Jamaica, I walked eight miles to and from the bus every day, and more recently I would do half an hour’s aerobic exercise on our maxi climber most mornings before my shower.’ But all that changed for doctor Carol Ighofose in January 2018, a month before her 49th birthday. ‘I’d had a steady morning, working in a centre dealing with patient calls, including 111 cases, and I was planning to go home for lunch before starting an eight-hour shift at A&E at Leicester Royal Infirmary.’ With her two teenage boys at boarding school, she didn’t have the day-to-day running around with them, but instead she had the stress of doing more shifts to pay school fees. 'In fact, it was getting worse.’ Driving home, Carol chatted on her hands-free system to a friend, Dr Tracey Bempah. 'hey’d met at medical school and Tracey had wanted to talk to her about a night shift she’d just finished. 'I’m telling you in case anything happens,’ Carol told her friend, as she drove along the Leicester roads. Sweaty and clammy, Carol tried to lower the window to get some fresh air, but couldn’t work out which button to press. They also gave Carol aspirin, a glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) spray to try to open her blood vessels, and morphine for the pain. She’d hoped the paramedics might take her straight to Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, where there is a specialist heart and lung centre, but they went to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, a five-minute drive away, because her ECG wasn’t showing a clear case of a heart attack. ‘I was being sick and the pain had gone down my left arm.’ Once in A&E, Carol had more ECGs and a chest X-ray to see if her heart was enlarged – it wasn’t. 'That was why troponin was leaking into my blood stream,’ explains Carol. ‘But a nurse concluded that because the GTN spray hadn’t worked, it meant I wasn’t having a heart attack. ‘I was having a STEMI, which meant there had been a total blockage in one of my main coronary arteries.’ Carol had an angiogram (an X-ray using dye to examine blood vessels) and it showed the blockage was in her left anterior descending artery. 'I knew that meant severe heart damage.’ Carol was in hospital for five days, with Simon and their boys Emmanuel, 18, and Caleb, 16, by her side. ‘I started on beta blockers to slow down my heart, ticagrelor to prevent clotting, and aspirin to thin my blood. Carol was put on a cardiac rehab programme, where she learnt the importance of warming up (‘no more racing in the park!’). ‘I can use my maxi climber at home again, and I go walking with Simon, because it’s important to build up all my muscles so they can help my heart. 'I have the option of having an ICD (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator), which would shock me if I suffered a cardiac arrest in the future. ■ A BHF-funded study showed that women are 50% more likely than men to be given a wrong initial diagnosis following a heart attack, increasing their risk of a poorer recovery, or of dying. In another study – over a 10-year period – the BHF found that more than 8,200 women in England and Wales could potentially have lived if they’d had the same quality of treatment as men after a heart attack.
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