I'm 47 (almost 48 now) and from when I was about 28-29, I started just throwing up for no reason. Over the next year or so it got a lot worse, so bad that at times I couldn't keep food down. Had all kinds of tests, camera down the throat etc. Went through a cancer scare after one of the tests and eventually I was diagnosed with a hiatus hernia.
Over the following year I noticed I was starting to get weaker, I thought I was getting unfit, the lads at work started asking if I'd been eating garlic as my breath stank at times. One day I noticed my legs were really swollen, so I popped to A&E. They did an ECG, then I saw some stupid doctor who asked was I doing drugs, said my ecg was fine, measured my calves and said as they were both the same size there was nothing wrong. Couple of days later, my legs swelled up again so I went to see my GP. He was genuinely worried, but as the hospital had said the ECG was fine, he sent me to a liver specialist. Anyway, after 2 months of tests, they came to the conclusion there was something wrong with my heart, but they didn't know what. I was told I wasn't allowed to do anything, including dishes and a heart transplant was mentioned at one point.
Over the next four months I was tested for all kinds, the consultant was just working through, eliminating one thing at a time. I had one test, which he told me there was no way I had what I was being checked for. When the results came back he said he thought I had this thing, but he'd never personally seen it, so he was having to look at text books. I was then sent to Wythenshaw to see a doctor and he confirmed I had constrictive pericaditis, a very rare condition where the pericardium (the thin membrane that surrounds and protects the heart) gets inflamed. Mine was so badly inflamed that my heart couldn't expand as it beat, it was battering away at 114bpm at rest, trying its hardest to keep me alive. My kidneys and liver weren't working properly and I was retaining massive amounts of fluid all over my body, I couldn't walk any kind of distance as was knackered all the time.
I now had a choice, surgery or die, so I chose surgery
. I was done in July 1999 at 32 years of age, chest opened up and they removed as much of the pericardium as they could. I didn't go on the bypass machine as they said they didn't want to actually remove my heart from the chest cavity, so they operated with it in situ. I lost 2 stone over the next 2 days as my body finally got rid of the fluid I'd been retaining. The doctors said my pericardium was 10mm thick when it should be about 1mm.
About 6 months after the op, my heart enlarged, but luckily it went back to normal size. I'm now fine and other than a massive scar on my chest, you'd never know what I'd been through.