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A local
woman has spoken out to raise awareness about living with a condition that could
have proved fatal.
Most people
believe that heart disease is something that strikes later in life, however,
Rebekah Goddard from Shaftesbury is living proof that the young
can be affected too. Mrs Goddard,
aged 26, spent her childhood in and out of hospitals suffering from bouts of
sickness and dizziness.
Diagnosis of
Long QT Syndrome did not come until she was 25 years old, nearly 16 years after
she first suffered an attack. At
the age of nine, she was suffering “panic” attacks at school when she would
break into a cold sweat and her heart would pound.
These
attacks were the first signs that something was seriously wrong with her heart.
But because the condition is so rare even the medical profession did not
think to check her heart. As with
many cases of genetic heart problems in the young it was diagnosed as fainting.
The attacks
continued throughout secondary school, and Mrs Goddard said that they became a
“normality”. Serious attacks
followed, yet diagnosis still proved elusive until last year.
“When I
started having the big seizures it started to affect me more because I didn’t
understand what was going on. Then
they diagnosed epilepsy, which I didn’t believe I had, and told me I
couldn’t drive any more. I was gutted, it had taken away my freedom, I had to sell my
car and rely on everyone else to get about.”
On
medication for the epilepsy she suffered further attacks and was taken back into
hospital.
“Nobody
thought to check my heart until I had a seizure in hospital and that saw me
clutching at it.” she said.
At the age
of 25 she had a pacing box fitted to her heart, two months before she was due to
marry her fiancé Ian in September 2001.
“It was
very scary, it was all so much of a shock.
I had it fitted two months before I was married and I was so occupied
with that I didn’t worry about it. After
I was married I got very upset and conscious of it and it hit me that I could
have died.”
Two months
after she was married her father put her in touch with the charity Cardiac Risk
in the Young and she met up with other people with similar conditions.
She also met top specialists who were able to put her mind at rest.
“I have
recently met up with people who have all gone through it.
It’s lovely to talk to someone that’s been through it because they
can sympathise with what has happened to you.”
“The
specialists are some of the top in the country and they know their stuff so I
have got a lot of answers to all the questions that have been going round in my
head.”
Now Mrs
Goddard is playing women’s football for Shaftesbury and although she sometimes
feels twinges she is much more prepared and knows when to take a break.
Mrs
Goddard is one of the lucky ones, each week between four and eight young people
in the UK die of undiagnosed heart disease, usually after exercise or a shock.
CRY is aiming to raise awareness in the public and also in the medical
profession to try and prevent some of these unnecessary deaths.
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