12:04 AM
Anonymous
When 16-year-old Jess Smith visited her GP about the pains in her chest, she was told they were nothing more than a spot of indigestion.
Within days, she was undergoing seven hours of emergency open-heart surgery.
The teenager, who had previously been considered perfectly healthy, suffered heart failure from an infection which she may have picked up when she had her ears pierced a year earlier.
She had a heart attack and was in intensive care for three weeks after being struck by a rare condition which usually affects people more than three times her age. Jess, then a keen dancer and gymnast, visited her GP in September last year.
She was told her chest pains were probably caused by indigestion and to take the heartburn remedy Gaviscon. When she did not feel any better and returned a week later, a second doctor realised she was suffering from heart failure and could be dead within days.
She was diagnosed with endocarditis – a rare infection of the heart – and was admitted to hospital for open-heart surgery, during which doctors replaced her heart valves. Just 24 hours after her operation she suffered a heart attack and then spent a total of seven weeks in hospital.
The trainee hairdresser from Camborne, Cornwall, now 17, is on a heart transplant waiting list. She said: ‘At first I thought it was indigestion. I went back [to the doctors], thinking it was a chest infection. I couldn’t believe it when they said it was my heart. ‘You expect your older relatives to suffer from heart attacks, not people my age.’
The teenager, who had previously been considered perfectly healthy, suffered heart failure from an infection which she may have picked up when she had her ears pierced a year earlier.
She had a heart attack and was in intensive care for three weeks after being struck by a rare condition which usually affects people more than three times her age. Jess, then a keen dancer and gymnast, visited her GP in September last year.
She was told her chest pains were probably caused by indigestion and to take the heartburn remedy Gaviscon. When she did not feel any better and returned a week later, a second doctor realised she was suffering from heart failure and could be dead within days.
She was diagnosed with endocarditis – a rare infection of the heart – and was admitted to hospital for open-heart surgery, during which doctors replaced her heart valves. Just 24 hours after her operation she suffered a heart attack and then spent a total of seven weeks in hospital.
The trainee hairdresser from Camborne, Cornwall, now 17, is on a heart transplant waiting list. She said: ‘At first I thought it was indigestion. I went back [to the doctors], thinking it was a chest infection. I couldn’t believe it when they said it was my heart. ‘You expect your older relatives to suffer from heart attacks, not people my age.’
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