When Pat Green woke up in the night with a heavy chest unable to breathe, she suspected that she was having a heart attack.
But after days worth of tests, it was revealed that Pat had literally suffered from a broken heart after going through the loss of her husband and having had an altercation with a neighbour, which paired together may have set the syndrome off.
The retired widow was shocked to find out that she had broken heart syndrome – otherwise known as a Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – where one of the heart’s chambers changes shape and enlarges.
Pat, 78, had lost her husband of nearly 60 years 18 months ago to dementia, and since she has been looking after their home and garden in Higher Compton on her own.
She was painting a garden fence one day in June when she “felt her heart all over the place” prompting her to take some tablets to control her heart rate – Pat had already been prescribed beta blockers for a long term irregular heartbeat.
But it was in the night that her symptoms worsened leading to her GP urging Pat to get to A&E as soon as possible.
“I woke up in the night with a really heavy chest and I thought, ‘this feels like a heart attack’,” said Pat.
“I thought ‘that’s it girl, you’ve had it’, but I managed to get back to sleep, although when I woke up in the morning my legs felt queezy.
“I thought I better get a check up from the doctor and she said to me that I should have called 999. She told me to go to casualty and to call an ambulance but my daughters were with me so we drove there.
“I was rushed through as I had had a suspected heart attack. I was given a blood test to see if it was a heart attack, and a baseline is supposed to be five – mine came back as 2,000 so they thought I had definitely had one.
Pat is due to undergo a further echocardiogram and has been told to carry on as normal in the meantime.
The British Heart Foundation says: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as Takotsubo syndrome, is a temporary condition where your heart muscle becomes suddenly weakened or ‘stunned’.
The condition can develop at any age, but typically affects more women than men.
The good news is that often the condition is temporary and reversible.
What are the symptoms of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy?
The main symptoms of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy are chest pain, breathlessness or collapsing, similar to a heart attack. In some cases, people may also suffer palpitations, nausea and vomiting.
If you experience these symptoms or see the signs in other people and suspect they may be having a heart attack, phone 999 immediately.
The cause of this condition is unknown, but there are a number of theories. About 75 per cent of people diagnosed with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy have recently experienced either a significant emotional experience or physical stress.
Examples of a stressful event include bereavement or being involved in a natural disaster such as an earthquake. There have also been reports of people experiencing Takotsubo after a happy event such as a wedding, reunion or a new job. An example of a physical stress is recent surgery.