We all have problems – some more serious than others – but it’s what you do next that defines you, claims Bloomfield. Getty Images.

Aged 33, 10-foot tall and bulletproof, I was climbing the corporate ladder.

That was my life. From the moment I left university I had just one ambition: to be a partner at a global consulting firm by the age of 35. To that end, I’d leave home at seven in the morning and return 12 hours later. I might spend a quarter-of-an-hour a day with my children – a four-year old son and twin one-year old girls. I’d tell myself I was doing it for them, that I was toiling away in order to set them up for a better life.

Really, though, it was for my ego. Nothing else.

I left for work one Monday morning still seething from an argument with my wife the day before. I was full of indignation and stubbornness, but also had a pain in my chest – a pain I’d never experienced before. On the train I googled “heart-attack symptoms” – and nothing I read was reassuring. But I kept going because I needed to close a deal at work.

The symptoms worsened over the next three hours, my heart racing in waves every few minutes. I tidied my desk and headed for the train, calling my wife to tell her I was unwell, and that I was sorry. But I made it only about 100 metres before it all became too much. Sweat dripping off me, my heart beating so hard I thought it would explode, I felt close to fainting. I hung up on my wife and dialed 000.

“In that moment I was alone and convinced I would die.”

Bundled into an ambulance, I watched as three paramedics attached me to an ECG machine, which recorded my heart rate at 220 beats per minute (and rising). In that moment my ambition meant nothing. In that moment I was alone and convinced I would die.

“Just breathe – breathe, mate. It’s OK,” one of the paramedics said. “We have it back under control. Your heart rate’s down. You’ve had an episode of SVT [supraventricular tachycardia]. You have a cardiac arrhythmia. The boys will take you to hospital.”
Doctors laid out my three options for treating a condition that can trigger cardiac arrest or stroke and affects roughly two per cent of men: do nothing, go on medication for the rest of my life, or undergo a procedure known as an EP Study, which carried a 90 per cent chance of success. I would have my life back in two weeks, they said. I told them to scrub up.

Except the procedure failed. How could I be the anomaly?

A further ten weeks passed, including two more failed procedures, each one upping the risk of my heart checking out for good. One day, glancing at my Polar tracker, the numbers told the story:

Time elapsed: 56min 38sec
Average heart rate: 131 bpm
Maximum heart rate: 238 bpm
Kilojoules burned: 1944
Distance travelled: 0 metres

My atrium was caught in a vicious cycle, rogue electrical signals firing while my ventricles madly tried to keep pace. Amid one episode, a doctor told me she needed to administer the drug adenosine to slow my heart: “It’s like impending doom,” she warned. I felt my heart stop, the blood in my body pause. I could hear people’s voices as the breath left my body. I figured I was dying. But then it was back – the frenetic beat of my faulty heart.

My condition drove me to depression. I was shit-scared to go to sleep, convinced I wouldn’t wake in the morning. When out of bed I did nothing, taking up space in the house, useless to my wife and children. An obsessive-compulsive disorder manifested, which had me checking my pulse every twenty seconds. Once vibrant and opinionated, I was now gaunt; a shell of a man.

At last I hit a tipping point. On Mother’s Day 2013, I woke up and didn’t give a damn, ignoring my wife, gazing at the ceiling. Late in the evening she stared at me, tears rolling down her face. She wasn’t crying for me but for herself. I’d broken her. I picked up the phone and rang for help.

We all have problems – some more serious than others – but it’s what you do next that defines you.

The psychologist broke me down and reassembled me. I came to acknowledge that I wasn’t going to die, that I could live again. We spoke about spirituality, reflection, meditation, verbalisation – things I once dismissed as bullshit. While we met only a few times, our consultations taught me that we all have shit going on, we all have problems – some more serious than others – but it’s what you do next that defines you.

From that point forward my life became less about my condition and more about breaking rusted-on habits and forming new ones. Hear this: you don’t need to wait for a crisis before realigning your thinking. Get in first! I began meditating twice daily, repeating my mantra: “I will be fit and healthy”. I focused on what I’d achieved the day before, what I would achieve today and looked forward to tomorrow.

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Having identified salt and even mild dehydration as triggers for my racing heart, I binned my old ways of eating and went on a semi-strict Mediterranean diet. I aimed for a minimum of 10,000 steps a day and got serious about sleep. I built a trusted team of go-to people for the bad days: my wife, my father, my mate, my doctor and my cardiologist. I focused my energy on the people I loved most, my family and friends, while divorcing myself from those who didn’t add value to my life.

The episodes would continue for a period of 18 months. Just after my 35th birthday, I played the final hand. I chose to ablate my AV node – killing a healthy part of my heart for the greater good. No turning back. A pacemaker would replace the natural electrical system. It would take over 100 per cent of the work.

Six months on, my heart’s back to normal. My OCD is gone, too. I’ve changed my life in ways I never thought possible. I’m as fit as I’ve been in the last ten years and work out daily. I ditched my job (and misguided ambition), and picked up a new role, cutting my hours by a third. I now spend a minimum of two hours a day with my kids. But most importantly, I will never go to bed angry – a lesson I learnt on that day in early 2013. Had I croaked that day, the final memory my wife would have had of me was an angry dickhead storming out the front door. Please, don’t ever let that happen to you.

Ben Bloomfield is a Director for Paceline,a charity focused on curing cardiac arrhythmia, and author of Never Go To Bed Angry – The Road to Mental and Physical Wellbeing.

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