John Launer: How I walked around Wales with “heart failure”

Seven years ago, a consultant cardiologist stood at the end of my hospital bed with five or six people he never introduced, and he told me I had severe heart failure. Seven years on, I’ve just finished circumnavigating the whole of Wales on foot. I did it in around 80 stages, a total of around 1000 miles across some of the most rugged coastal and hill terrain in Britain.I tell my story in this way for several reasons. Firstly, I want to remind everyone that doctors still break bad news to patients in the crassest ways, without either privacy or hope, as if they’re making an educational video about all the mistakes you can make. Secondly, I want to emphasise what a stigmatising and outdated term “heart failure” is: it covers everything from an unexpected finding on an echocardiogram to acute pulmonary oedema. I’m not the first to suggest completely…
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