I did have a conversation with my wife about it and there was this rather funny thing in, I don’t know whether it was, yeah it’s in one of the booklets that you get about rehabilitation where it says ‘if you’re able to go up two flights of stairs, you’re able to make love which I think was quite amusing, because it rather puts into perspective this activity.

I think that I can understand a concern about sex but actually what happened, it’s interesting that what happened when I came out of hospital very closely mirrored what happened when my wife was diagnosed with cancer. And I think this is a fairly common, I mean, I gather it’s a fairly common psychological consequence is that rather than turning away, ones, suddenly sex, sexual contact became very important.

And in fact, since I’ve come out of hospital, I’ve had rather considerably more sexual activity than I would normally have had. I’m someone who’s been married seventeen years etc., you know. But I think that’s partially the closeness thing, and it’s partially you know, I think it is that thing about death, having the proximity to death, having that effect, I gather it’s a sort of fairly common psychological effect.

What that did though of course, what it has done is quite helpfully, at least at this stage – suggested that I’m not having that side effect, but of course I’m aware that, I mean, there may be an accumulative effect. But the first time that we made love I was aware, you know, I was conscious of ‘oh my God you know’, but that’s about the only time I’ve thought that. But of course it’s actually rather ridiculous because ones doing a lot of other things like going, running up stairs etc.

At first you’re too scared, you’re too scared, too scared to have sex because you’re frightened in case you’re going to have a heart attack. You know, your blood pressures going to get high and have a heart attack, and for me, because I feel depressed and down all the time, I don’t feel the slightest bit sexy at all. You know, I just, I’ve got no confidence or anything so, it’s just knocked my sex life out the window completely at the moment;

It’s something I do need to address with my doctor because whether it’s a physical thing or, or mental thing, you know, I do need to speak. They say if, you know, if you do suffer depression you haven’t, and don’t fancy sex that you do need to speak to somebody about it because there is supposed to be something wrong if that’s the case, so, so, no. For me personally, you’re frightened, and now, because I feel depressed and down, I don’t feel nice or anything so I don’t want to;

That’s the way that I feel, I don’t want to. So then that creates a bad feeling at home because like my partner obviously feels rejected because I don’t want to. But it’s not because I don’t want to because I don’t feel the same way about him; it’s how I feel about myself, so. But it’s trying to explain that to him. But he doesn’t understand that it’s not because I don’t care for him, it’s just I don’t really care too much about myself at the moment so that’s why.

Resuming your sex life after a heart attack, it’s quite difficult. It wasn’t so much difficult for me as for my wife actually. She was very concerned that I was going to throw another wobbler, but once you get over it, it’s okay, yeah life comes back to normal and as for the beta blockers, I wouldn’t say it’s affected me greatly, no.

And your wife getting over that, is there anything that helped?

What helped was talking. You have to, you have to always, you can tell when things are not quite right, ‘So what is the problem?’ ‘Oh I’m a bit concerned, I don’t want you to hurt yourself, I don’t want you to. ‘Okay I’m not going to hurt myself, I’m aware of what I’m doing. If I hurt, you’ll know. But it’s not a problem.

Because of the scar on, I didn’t want anybody to look at me, even my legs, you know with the scar all up my leg. I didn’t want anybody, I’d wear trousers all the while. And I didn’t want anybody to see the scar down my chest. It sort of, it’s you know, it was horrible. And I didn’t feel, and I just didn’t feel sexual at all.

I just didn’t want to know anything like that. But as time goes on and you get your confidence back, my husbands never worried. He loves me for me, whatever happens, I mean, he really does love me. So the caringness between, with him and that, that makes you feel nice about yourself again.

He makes you feel, but at first I didn’t, well it was a long time after that we had any sexual relations. But as I said, when you get your confidence back and he made me feel good, so that all come back.