Rare condition brings mother eight heart attacks by age of 34

Bronnach Pemberton now struggles with everyday life as she has been left with debilitating heart failure.

The mother-of-three is to likely to need a heart transplant in future.

She said: “I have had to literally say goodbye to my former life.

“Having three boys, you want to be around to see they turn out to be lovely little gentlemen.

“Will I be here to see them get married? We just don’t know.”

Mrs Pemberton, from Bramley, Leeds, had given birth to third son Eoin eight days before she became unwell in February last 
year.

“I was breastfeeding Eoin and I started to feel very ill,” she said.

“I was clammy, I had pains in my jaw and had really bad shortness of breath, heavy arms and felt pains in my chest.

“Looking back I think ‘why didn’t I think I was having a heart attack?’ But I was 34 and I was fit and healthy – it was the last thing on my mind.”

Her symptoms were dismissed as panic attacks but when they returned, she went to hospital where she was diagnosed as having had a massive heart attack.

Two of her coronary arteries had split, known as Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection or SCAD, and she needed immediate surgery.

Despite Leeds being a specialist centre, medics had never seen the condition. “When I was in intensive care, the surgeon told my mum and dad most cases were diagnosed post mortem and I was really lucky to survive,”she said.

The former teacher at Bradford Academy is due to retire on medical grounds and is to be assessed by a transplant specialist.

There are just 260 known survivors of SCAD in the world.

She spoke out about life with heart failure as the British Heart Foundation launches a campaign around the condition. New figures show over 70 per cent of heart attack patients in Yorkshire now survive.