The heartwarming story of Sally Bee
At the age of 36, TV presenter and mother-of-three Sally Bee had three heart attacks in quick succession and wasn't expected to live. Five years later she talks of her recovery and her change of diet, which prompted her to write a cookbook, The Secret Ingredient - which spawned an unexpected order for 12 copies from the White House.
TV presenter Sally Bee looks the picture of good health - slim, fit, with glowing skin and glossy hair. Yet according to medical experts, she shouldn't be alive.
At the age of 36, this happy, lively mother-of-three from Stratford-upon-Avon had three heart attacks in quick succession, which left half of her heart irreparably damaged. Doctors did what they could but expected her to die.
Only she didn't die. She's living life to the full - and she can now boast that the Obamas own a copy of her healthy eating cookbook.
Her incredible story has baffled the medical profession, but she's used her experience to help other heart patients and has published The Secret Ingredient, stuffed full of recipes to keep hearts healthy everywhere, including the White House.
When Sally suffered her heart attacks, she had three children under five, didn't smoke or drink and was fit, just trying to lose the weight she had gained having her youngest child, Lela.
"I went to a child's birthday party and just very quickly felt very unwell," she explains.
"I had a feeling of impending doom. I handed my nine-month-old daughter to a friend, went to the toilet and then came out and collapsed."
The pain in her chest increased, her left arm went limp and she felt sick and sweaty. An ambulance took her to Warwick Hospital but paramedics thought she was having a panic attack and she was eventually allowed home with some indigestion medicine.
"I believed everything they told me - I had such faith in the medical profession but I don't any more. I was having a heart attack all night."
The pain gradually subsided but a couple of days later, it hit her again.
"It was like a herd of elephants stamping on my chest."
Again, she was rushed to hospital, only this time the ECG results were shocking.
"I was told by a cardiologist that my blood tests showed I had suffered a very serious heart attack."
In hospital the pain worsened and Sally's condition deteriorated to the extent that she couldn't speak.
"The only thought in my head was to keep breathing. I made a deal with myself that I would just keep breathing. I think that saved my life at the time."
The team managed to stabilise Sally to move her to a hospital in Coventry where she had an angiogram to assess any blockage in the arteries, but the surgeon was so shocked at the damage he found that he took off his gloves and left the operating theatre.
"The nurses and assistants followed quietly as if embarrassed - I was all alone. There was nothing they could do. They'd left me there to die. I thought for a moment that I was dead and this was what it was like."
She later found out that her main left artery had unravelled and disintegrated. She was diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), a condition so rare that only 120 cases have been recorded since its detection in 1938.
Doctors told her husband, Dogan, she was going to die.
"Dogan came in sobbing, saying 'I love you'. It was the moment he walked in that I realised I was alive. At that point I thought about the children and that's where my survival instinct kicked in big time.
"Nobody can really explain why I survived that night. According to all the medical books, I shouldn't have."
Sally believes that she survived because she was fit beforehand, a non-smoker and a healthy eater. Day by day her heart became stronger and a few weeks after her heart attacks she was sent home, with doctors expecting her to return imminently.
"At first I could walk a few paces, then I'd have to lie down. But I was running high on adrenaline because I'd survived the un-survivable."
She relied on family and friends for support and had to employ a nanny to look after the children, but there were a lot of bleak months ahead.
"At my darkest point I was going to take 10,000 out of the bank in cash and leave them to it and disappear," she recalls.
But food and exercise became her saviour as she fought to regain control of her life.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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