ON A DARK winter's morning earlier this year, 37-year-old Lydia Larkin was in the kitchen of her home getting ready to take her two dogs for a walk, when she suddenly felt light-headed. Then she was overwhelmed by nausea and lost her balance, falling to the floor.
Terrified, she managed to stumble to the bedroom, and woke her husband who called an ambulance. The paramedics thought that Lydia had probably had a stroke. At the hospital, an MRI scan confirmed the unwelcome diagnosis.
Lydia was bewildered. She was healthy, slim, didn't smoke and had been told her blood pressure was fine. "I had just lost my mum to breast cancer and I was still grieving," she says. "It felt unfair that I should have such bad luck."
But after some tests, the doctors thought they might have an explanation. Lydia had a hole in her heart.
Astonishingly, 1 in 4 ...
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