Husband’As far as the cholesterol problems are concerned, when it was first diagnosed, the [hospital] were pretty good but then I approached the British Heart foundation and I got some leaflets from them. But as it was affecting me, I’d read anything that comes in the papers or on the television, anything to do with heart problems.

You get to the point, well what more do I want to know? Am I going to change my life style? What am I going to do? Then I think, I am happy as I am – I go out – I know I am going to die. When that happens that happens, I will do my best to stop it! By and large I do listen to what [wife] and any other doctor tells me.

WifeWhat I also think is that every day it seems something new comes out about what’s bad for you – don’t do this and don’t do that. Then a bit later on you get a completely contradictory research. It is hard really to know where the truth lies and I suspect they don’t know really themselves.

I would like to be more informed as to what the odds are. I have tried beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors; and I have now discovered another form of ACE inhibitor, which I am now taking that seems to have less side-effects than most other pills. I found these through the grapevine of asking at least 20 people – friends who would know someone who has got high blood pressure – ‘what are they doing?’ Basically it has been a sort of grapevine of conversations that has brought me to these particular pills.

I’ve relied on what I’ve been told by my doctors largely. I do feel I know a fair bit about it but I don’t want to waste time on it somehow. I’m sorted out, I’m running fine and if it goes wrong, when it goes wrong then I will address it, that’s how I tend to be about things anyway.

I’ve been given a booklet from the British Heart Foundation which has been quite helpful. It tells you about the drugs, it tells you about what exactly is being measured when you have your blood pressure done and explains about the systolic and diastolic rates, and so on. It tells you what is average and it tells what you what you can do in the way of changing lifestyle to help your problem.

I am aware that there are web sites and we do have the Internet. In fact, our GP in our local parish bulletin has given the names of various web sites and the British Heart Foundation one was one of them.

They didn’t explain anything in those days. Nothing whatsoever, everything was hidden away as it might be. It was like having a doctor who said ‘Come in, sit down and what can I do for you?’ with a very straight face, and that was that, and then you went, and nothing was explained whatsoever. I’ve learnt more about things in my older days than because now they tell you all about different things.

I’ve picked up a leaflet once or twice from the Heart Foundation, when I’ve been at hospital and I’ve seen these little booklets about high blood pressure, but I still wouldn’t know what causes it. I do like to know things but I just I don’t know enough. I mean some of the books you get from the library they’re too technical. You can’t understand them so it spoils it really.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything to do with blood pressure which I’ve understood. I think I understand more of this doctor that comes on the radio. I can’t even remember his name but hes a great person, people will phone up about medical things and he will explain it completely down to earth, he doesn’t go into all the technical things which is nice.

Comparatively recently, the last couple of years maybe, I started taking an interest in medicines and what they do. I read every leaflet there is, I usually have these leaflets in packets with medicine. I’ve also got a little book about medicines so every time I had a new medicine prescribed I’d check it up in my little book; what are the side effects, warnings, anything like that. All these medical programmes on television, I love watching these programmes. They increase my interest in the matters of medicine – I don’t think it’s anything to do with fear. I really do read the warnings, but I don’t quite believe that they affect me. From experience I find that whateverwarnings are given, they don’t seem to affect me; nausea, headaches or any of these different symptoms that may appear according to these warnings.

Theres a series of pamphlets which were useful in the beginning. The Heart Association pamphlets they produce – I think there are over a dozen of them – little booklets. I have those upstairs and I read each and every one of them about twice, they have all sorts of diagrams and they talk about other things like diet. They explain various procedures and they talk about medicines but not in as detailed a way as I thought I wanted to be informed.

There are American websites which give you a lot of information and I’ve been able to get diagrams of the heart. For example I had to undergo anangiography and I got full explanations. The doctors here were very, very good- I got diagrams from them and they drew pictures and so on,but I got a lot of things from the Internet and articles about angiography and also abstracts and full accounts of medications.

It’s amazing what you can gain from people and from research foundations. But if you sign onto the foundation as a lay person, all you get is gobbledy-gook. If you turn round and say you are a doctor or a medical researcher and sign on you get access to far more technical libraries. You know, where you can actually look.

In America, if a person is hypertensive – what they call severe hypertensive – (and to them severe hypertension is about 180 over about 110) You are in there and have an andiogram, straight away. They are looking to see if there is any obstruction of the arteries on the heart. If the valves leak, if the heart enlarging and so on. Then they find what the specific cause of hypertension is. In this country we don’t find a specific cause of hypertension. We say, ‘you are hypertensive. Here is Innovace 20mg twice a day. Come back in 6 months time to the clinic.