Stories

As Cecilia from Clitheroe approached her 70s, she was still enjoying long walks with family and friends. After a series of chest infections and medical tests, she was eventually diagnosed with heart valve disease. Her story is a poignant reminder for why it is important to get your heart checked sooner rather than later.

Although Lydia Monk will never know it, her experience of heart valve disease proved to be the inspiration for the birth of Heart Valve Voice and its campaign to transform treatment for patients across the UK.

Margaret Willcock was prescribed antibiotics for a chest infection, before it was finally realised that she had heart valve disease. In this blog she advises patients to ask their GP to check their heart with a stethoscope and to not to be worried about treatment. “It’s well worth it,” she says from experience.