‘If you have any concerns, get checked up’
Cavan's Irish Heart Foundation Champion makes appeal during Heart Failure Awareness Week
“It started the day before my 48th birthday,” says Michael Madigan, who is Cavan’s Irish Heart Foundation Patient Champion.
Among his other roles, Michael sits on the Service User Panel for Cavan General Hospital, is PRO and member of the Arva Cornafean Killeshandra Community First Responders and has addressed MEPs in Brussels on policies around heart health.
To mark Heart Failure Awareness Week, which runs from May 5-11, the retired nurse shared his story with The Anglo-Celt to raise awareness of the condition and help others.
For Michael, now 56, he first noticed something wasn’t right in October 2016. He was sitting in his Cornafean home with his children having breakfast, when he started to notice pain in his chest. His 13-year-old son Daniel had just gone out to the school bus, while Grace (10) was having her breakfast, when Michael started sweating and experiencing a tingling sensation in his arms.
“I knew straight away that there was something very wrong. I phoned 999 almost immediately because I was just so certain. It was a textbook heart attack.
“Calling an ambulance for yourself, it’s something a lot of people wouldn’t do,” he continued. However that decision is what saved his life.
“I made the call, and it was the best decision I made so far in my life probably.
“After marrying Kate,” he quickly added.
Within 15 minutes the ambulance arrived.
“They could see that I was having was is called a STEMI, which is a serious heart attack. It means that basically one of your main arteries is blocked.”
The father of two was airlifted from Arva football pitch to the Mater Hospital in Dublin, where they realised his heart was 100% blocked on one side and 90% blocked on the other. He received “lifesaving treatment”.
“All the doctors and nurses in the theatre asked me if I was a smoker. I never smoked but they were very surprised. To have a heart attack under fifty is very unusual for a non-smoker.
“They removed the clot, they put two stents in and, before lunch, I was in recovery,” he described.
Later that evening he was sent back to Cavan where he spent a week in the Coronary Care Unit.
“While I was there then they told me about the heart failure. When you’ve a heart attack your heart is starved of oxygen for a while until they take out the clot. My heart was starved of oxygen for two to three hours so, if it had of been longer, I would have gone into cardiac arrest and maybe died.”
He described how a healthy heart will pump 60% of the blood around your body per beat, while his now pumps 30% on each beat.
When Michael was told he had heart failure, he thought he was going to die.
“Heart failure, it sounds like oh my God I better start making plans.
“My life expectancy is definitely not what it was before without a doubt but it’s not as bad as what I thought it would be,” he described, before adding “I don’t plan on going anywhere soon.”
He now has “good days and bad days” but is determined to “make the most of every day”.
Despite heart failure affecting “so many people”, Michael believes “there’s not enough awareness”.
“We’re not counting the numbers, we don’t have a registry [of people with heart failure],” he outlined, adding that it’s a “work in progress”.
According to the Irish Heart Foundation website, there are three main symptoms of heart failure - shortness of breath during everyday activities and while lying down; weight gain or swelling in your ankles, legs or your abdomen; fatigue and a rapid heartbeat.
“It about prevention,” Michael told the Celt.
Risk factors
“You don’t all of a sudden develop heart failure. You need to be aware of the risk factors,” he advised. They are smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, poor diet, lack of exercise, poor stress management, over consumption of alcohol and family history.
“You can improve your outcomes by managing your risk factors and not developing hearts problems in the first place,” he said.
“After prevention it’s about early intervention so, if you have any concerns, you need to go and see your doctor and get screened.”
“If you have any concerns, get checked up,” he urged, telling people to “go to your doctor early”.
National policy
On a national level, there has not been a national cardiovascular disease health policy since 2019, with representatives from Cavan and Monaghan recently joining an Oireachtas Heart and Stroke group to get this policy established.
“It’s a work in progress, there’s a big push now,” Michael said optimistically.
“Considering that heart problems kill more people than any other health problem in Ireland and every other country, to not have a health policy, it just seems crazy.”
Check yourself
The Irish Heart Foundation website has a ‘Heart Failure Symptom Checker’ as well as further information on managing your heart health. The website can be found at irishheart.ie
There will be a heart failure awareness day in the Cavan Hospital foyer today (Wednesday), May 7, from 9am to 12 noon. The will be measuring vital signs and giving risk modification advice.