From Star Wars to Cardiac Wards - Kari's patient Story
April 27th 2019 was due to be a fun, busy and exciting day. It was a concert day - performing music from the Star Wars films with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra.
Between dress rehearsal and performance, we were having a celebratory afternoon tea for my friend’s birthday. I was 61, in good health, had been retired for a few months and had just bought a secondhand motor home to go travelling. We left the restaurant at 3pm to walk back to the Philharmonic Hall just across the road.
It was eight days later when I became aware I was being pushed in a bed along a corridor accompanied by two nurses and hooked up to drips and drains.
Those eight days have never reappeared in my memory (maybe a good thing). The gap was filled-in by friends and family.
While on stage, in the middle of the concert, I began to count the musical beats out loud... one, two, three, four.
My friend next to me asked if I was ok, and I started, in his words, “chatting broken biscuits”.
I was helped off stage and, despite my protestations that I didn’t want any fuss and would simply drive home and go to bed, an ambulance was called.
My blood pressure was behaving oddly, I was having ‘absences’ and they thought it was a stroke. The assessment at Royal Liverpool A&E suggested something cardiac, so I was blue-lighted to Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.
There, after a ‘frank exchange of views’ between clinicians, I was prioritised for CT scan, and the rest, as they say is history!
Fourteen hours of surgery, a new valve and Dacron graft.
Recovery has included AKI, SVT, TIA, TAAA, further surgery, PTSD and more, on what I like to call my perverse cardiothoracic acronym bingo card.
I was lucky - the stars all aligned that night to get me diagnosed and treated promptly and successfully.
A GP trainee knew I 'wasn’t right’ and called 999; I was five minutes from a big A&E who thought it was cardiac and sent me ten minutes further down the road to a European centre of excellence. A doctor argued with a radiologist and got me into the scanner.
One of the first things I did when I was recovering in hospital was google ‘aortic dissection’. That led me to the ADAUKI buddies facebook group, the charity’s website and the THINK AORTA campaign.
I had spent 15 years in medical education, teaching at the University of Liverpool School of Medicine and had never heard of aortic dissection (I’m not a clinician, but liked to think I was a well-informed lay person. It turned-out I wasn’t!!)
I was lucky, but too many still are not. By spreading the THINK AORTA message, we can, and do, increase the number of success stories like mine.
