I now come to the conclusion, that while I think they are well intentioned, I think the total attitude in this country towards diabetes and hypertension is in the dark ages. Doctors have not told me direct to my face what the problems are, nor told me what the consequences of my actions-or lack of action- are going to result in. No doctor except my own GP has turned round to me and said, ‘Well look you know you are heading for the pine box if you don’t do something about this. They don’t; they just turn round and say, ‘We will increase this tablet and take some aspro and see you in six months time.

Today I am now on three different tablets for the hypertension’ Analapril, Innovaseand Tenormin, and Aspirin daily. Now my blood pressure even with all those tablets is 180130. So I am now what is called a severe hypertensive. I have now contacted a clinical foundation in America and ascertained the facts. They have now asked for all my notes from the National Neurological hospital; all my x-rays, MRI scans, CT scans. They will give me a second opinion and, if necessary, invite me to the US to have a shunt in my brain. It’s called an epigastric shuntwhich will relieve the fluid on the brain. There are disadvantages to it, but they think on the basis of it, the reason for my hypertension in the first place was nothing to do with my heart or my arteries but was due to the tumour that was in my brain and causing the blockage.

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.

It has taken over my life in so much that I can’t do the things now that I want to do. I would like to be allowed to run my own business again and to work. The most frustrating thing about this is not being able to work, to be at home all day.

I have sat down over the last 7 years and I have managed to pass my doctorate in computer science, but it has been extremely hard work. If it wasn’t for a computer, where I can input, I would get nowhere. You can constantly review what you are doing all the time; I have got a diary on the computer so you can remember what you are doing all the time. The problem is concentration; because I get headaches after about 15-20 minutes of reading so I have to stop reading and do something else.

Whenever I walk I am totally breathless because of the hypertension. I now suffer from left sided hemiopia as they call it, because the optic nerve has been damaged by the hypertension. Due to the hypertension, my eyes have started to haemorrhage at the back. So my eyesight is getting bad as well. Also because I have now gone bilaterally deaf, this could also be a cause of the hypertension.

I came out of the army in 1982, then I could run about 20 miles. Physically fit. So to me it came as an absolute shock to suddenly find myself with hypertension. And at the same time an x-ray showed that my heart was actually enlarged. I managed to get over that particular episode, and they tried different drugs while I was in hospital until eventually they got my blood pressure down to within the near normal range 13090.

The ECGs they did while I was in the hospital showed a slight flattening of the p waves but nothing else. The exercise tolerance test I passed absolutely fine. It was a normal ECG except for this just slight flattening. So therefore it was diagnosed as unspecific. They didn’t know why I had hypertension. My cholesterol levels were low, were very low and the triglyceride levels also were in normal range. So as for the blood chemistry there was no particular reason why I should have hypertension.

I thought my blood pressure being down just must be a fluke thing – something that is freaky and all that, because I didn’t feel bad. I felt absolutely fine. Full of energy, full of life. I just totally ignored what the doctors were saying.

I went and got another job and carried on working. But the nature of the job I had was travelling all over the country in a car, stopping at service stations, drinking cans of coke, Yorkie bars, pork pies, things like this. And before I realised it my weight had blossomed up to about 17 stone. And then I had another episode where I passed out, or was nearly passing out driving my car down the motorway. I managed to brake and pull in over the side where I slumped and obviously somebody must have spotted me because the next thing I knew the police were knocking and once again I was rushed to hospital. Blood pressure up, once again. This time it was about 240 over about 170, so they then said to my family that it was very doubtful if I would live the night.

Then in 92, I came here to London to work and I went to work in the British Museum as an internal security warden. Which was a very demanding job, where you had to be very fit. But by this time my blood pressure had gone down I thought to myself ‘I don’t need this tablet, come off it’ and of course I was very fit. Then one night I was walking along the roof of the British Museum supervising contractors who were working, when I tripped and damaged my ankle which seemed to be all right after a short while. And then when I had to go down some vertical ladders, when you had to turn round backwards, I put my foot on the first rung and had screeching pain. The shock of it made me let go and I fell backwards onto my head.

Two weeks after that I had epileptic fits and was admitted to a hospital. It was a nightmare. My blood pressure went up immediately. I told her about it and straight away I was put back onto the tablets again, back onto innovace. The diabetes had come back with vengeance. They had me on two drugs then, two diabetic drugs because it is weight related and late onset diabetes. And then the British Museum retired me because I had diabetes, hypertension and epilepsy.
Being at home, not being able to work again by order of the doctors, I then started to put weight on. I promptly went up to 16 stone. My blood pressure rapidly went up again. Today I am now on three different tablets for the hypertension.

It is 7 years ago since my accident. It’s been something like 15 years since I was first diagnosed with hypertension. And it’s taken me all this length of time to take the bull by the horns, stop depending on the National Health Service and my local GP to push tablets down me all the time. And try to find cures by medicine; rather than look into myself to actually find what a cure for hypertension could be.

But what causes hypertension? I know people a lot bigger than myself who don’t have it and quite a lot of people are very slim and thin. My recent mother-in-law, totally riddled with heart disease, had never been fat at all in her life. So, natures not selective. No matter what size, or what age you are, or what build you are; you can get hypertension. What does it make you feel when they say to you you are not going to last beyond 60?

Well it is very worrying because my youngest child is 8 years old and I have got a 14 and a 15 year old still living at home. And it worries you, and for my wife. Although the mortgage is nearly paid off on this house, we have only got another year to go. You still have to worry about children, their education and university. And then there is the thought that I am not going to work again, because I can’t concentrate for very long.

My mother died at the age of 57 from heart failure. Just suddenly, she had a heart attack one day. Very slim woman – never been fat in her life – always working – always energetic. So she had this had this heart attack and then a week later she died.

She only had one kidney and she had this congestive heart failure.

Then when I got talking at her funeral to all my aunts and uncles on her side in Scotland I found that she had 18 brothers and sisters of which only five are still alive and all the rest had died of heart failure. So it didn’t come as a surprise to me that there was a history of heart disease but rather than genetic I think it was due to poor nutrition and diet in childhood itself. My grandmother’s idea of diet was big lumps of fat thrown into a stew point of lentils and barley and potatoes. Potatoes with everything. So the diet nutritionally was very very poor. And you can imagine with 18 children there was probably not sufficient either.