Philip's Journal

23rd April... it is a date I will never forget... It is the anniversary today of my diagnosis with heart disease... The visit to the doctor on this day last year discovered a heart murmur, a murmur that changed my life and really my view of life... The confirmation of a dodgy heart started with a blood test and an ECG, 8 weeks later a Cardiograph that resulted in immediate admission to Prince Philip Hospital. The outcome of these tests showed a critical heart valve and the only remedy was surgery... I spent the next 5 weeks in Ward 4 of PPH looked after by the brilliant team of medical and hotel services staff. I was then shipped off to Morriston Hospital where another brilliant team of medical and hotel services staff prepared me for the near 8 hour operation on 31 July... I woke in ICU and was transferred to the HDU afterwards and a week later I was sent home with a heart that was working a lot better. A year later I am close to recovery, still some pain and discomfort but if I had not gone to the doctor when I did, the outcome might have involved daisies...

Started second session of Cardiac Rehab yesterday... 16 weeks, twice a week, nothing like embracing a reason to get the heart well again!!! https://avrthejourney.org/

Hello, I am Philip Warlow from Llanelli in Wales, reaching 2020 was an achievement in itself because of the journey through 2018 and 2019 had been fraught with obstacles that I thought I would never overcome but I have arrived at my destination and I am lucky to able to write about it. Life has been slowly getting back to some sort of normality in the 6 months since the operation, but the definition of normality probably is very different to what it would mean to everyone else. I have good days, when I can move freely and I can enjoy the physical attributes of walking, cooking, completing all the household duties I have been able to perform over the last 40 or so years and I have days when I have aches on my pains and pains on my aches: chest, back, and hips. Lying awake at night I think of the new valve inside of my heart imagining it at work, asking it kindly to keep working for me. I am so lucky that I had something that could be fixed; there are so many thousands of individuals out there that have health issues, I was one of the lucky ones that got diagnosed and operated on before the heart deteriorated too far, a second chance at the gift of life.