As the British Heart Foundation seeks a cure for heart failure, a young mother tells Lisa Salmon how the terminal condition leaves her too exhausted to even pick up her baby.

By Lisa Salmon


As she breastfed her new baby, contented mother-of-three Bronnach Pemberton had no reason to suspect her life was about to be destroyed.

The seemingly fit and healthy young mum had a massive heart attack, caused by an undiagnosed heart condition, as she fed her eight-day-old son Eoin.

And while she was lucky enough to survive, she now lives with heart failure so severe that she can't even pick her baby up.

Pemberton, 35, is one of more than 750,000 people in the UK who live with heart failure, which means the heart doesn't pump blood around the body as well as it used to.

The condition, which occurs when the heart is irreversibly damaged, most commonly by a heart attack, means oxygen in the blood can't reach the parts of the body where it's needed.

There can be a build-up of fluid, often in the legs and feet, because the heart isn't moving blood around the body well enough, so fluid pools in the tissues, including the lungs.

In severe cases like Pemberton's, heart failure can lead to extreme exhaustion and breathlessness, making everyday tasks like having a shower or picking up a baby impossible.

And despite the fact that many more people are surviving heart attacks these days, living with the resulting heart failure can be a death sentence, as three-quarters of those with severe heart failure will die within five years of diagnosis.

"You don't think something's going to happen to your heart," says Pemberton. "You always think it's people who are overweight, people who smoke. And my lifestyle was healthy.

"But I'm like a battery with no power now - this is a long-term condition that will kill me."

There's no cure for heart failure - and that's why the British Heart Foundation (BHF) is renewing its Mending Broken Hearts Appeal, which aims to raise millions of pounds to find a cure, and will launch a series of television adverts next month.

While heart failure is a condition that mainly affects the elderly, Pemberton is living proof that it destroys young lives too.

She was just 34 when she had a heart attack after two of her coronary arteries tore, eight days after the birth of baby Eoin in February last year.

The secondary school teacher says she started to feel very ill while feeding Eoin, feeling clammy with pains in her chest and jaw, extreme shortness of breath, and heavy arms.

"Looking back I do wonder why I didn't realise I was having a heart attack," she says. "But I was 34 and fit and healthy - it was the last thing on my mind."

Although a GP dismissed her symptoms as a panic attack, she felt so ill that she went to hospital a few days later, and doctors found two of her coronary arteries had torn due to an undiagnosed rare condition called Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD).

She'd had a massive heart attack, and needed emergency open heart surgery immediately.

During the operation, a third coronary artery tore and she had another huge heart attack. Her condition was so unstable in the days after the surgery that she was given the last rites.

Although she lived, the attacks damaged her heart so much that the resulting heart failure means the formerly fit and active mum now struggles to walk even short distances and needs daily help to cope with her three boys - Jared, aged five, Conan, four, and Eoin, now one.

"I'm extremely tired and I sleep for hours every day," she says. "I actually sleep more than the baby.

"I can't lift him and there are days when I can't even think about pushing the buggy because I'm so exhausted."

The Leeds-based mum can't stand up for long and has a mobility scooter so she can go for walks with her husband Andrew and the children.

She admits she gets very upset and frustrated about her condition, particularly as she used to be a very hands-on mum who loved the outdoor life.

"I've had to literally say goodbye to my former life, to my independence, to the person I was," she says ruefully.

Pemberton is waiting to be assessed for a heart transplant, but in the meantime she admits her biggest fear is not being around to see her children grow up - she's not even sure she'll be alive in September to see Conan start school.

"I don't even feel I can make plans for the summertime. Will I see Eoin walk properly? Will I be here to see them get married? We just don't know."

There's no family history of heart problems, she says, and what's happened to her has been a huge shock, particularly because she's a normal weight, doesn't smoke, ate healthily and didn't drink much.

"There's nothing I could have done to stop this from happening," she says, "and that's one of the hardest things.

"People don't expect young, fit women to have heart attacks. We have to get the message out there - women are having their symptoms dismissed."

Amy Thompson, a BHF senior cardiac nurse, says that while the main cause of heart failure is a heart attack, other causes include cardiomyopathy (a mostly inherited disease of the heart muscle), or high blood pressure that's untreated for a long time.

"You can have heart failure and not know you've got it," she says. "It depends what the underlying cause is."

Thompson explains that when the heart muscle is damaged, it scars, and the scar tissue isn't as flexible as healthy heart muscle so it can't pump as well.

If only a small area of heart tissue has been damaged, there may not be any heart failure as the rest of the heart can compensate.

But if the heart attack is large and damages a lot of the muscle, heart failure is likely, depending on where in the heart the damage is.

The BHF has this month pledged £7.5 million from the Mending Broken Hearts Appeal to fund scientists at three new dedicated BHF Centres of Regenerative Medicine across the UK.

They will specialise in looking for new treatments to repair heart attack damage, including growing new blood vessels, stem cell therapies and teaching the heart to repair itself.

For example, creatures such as the zebrafish can already regenerate new heart cells when their hearts are damaged. The BHF scientists are researching how this transformation can be replicated for the human heart.

"People don't realise that heart failure is progressive, and don't understand what it is," says Thompson.

"A lot of people think it's the same thing as a heart attack. But people who have severe heart failure have a short life expectancy, and are really debilitated.

"They can feel like they're drowning or suffocating because they can't catch their breath. It's really horrible."

Current treatments include water tablets to get rid of some of the fluid build-up, and medications to help the heart beat more efficiently and lower blood pressure.

"Our researchers are trying to find a treatment or a cure within a generation," explains Thompson.

"People think you have a heart attack and either live or die, but actually there's heart failure in the middle.

"More people are surviving heart attacks, but although we're saving their lives, they're left with heart failure and we need to find a cure for them."


:: For more information visit www.bhf.org.uk/findthecure, and to donate text FIGHT to 70123 to give £3.