Saturday July 14th, 2018 is a day that will remembered in the Fiander household for many years to come and little did we know at the beginning of the day of how events would pan out for my brother Dave during that day.

It started like any other, it was planned to be a nice day celebrating my wife and a friend’s recent birthdays and our wedding anniversary. The plan of the day was for my brother and his wife to come and visit us from Taunton and to see Warhorse in Cardiff that night. We had arranged to go in a few hours earlier so that we could show them the sites of Cardiff Bay and then meet up with our friends at the theatre. It was a glorious warm July day and we walked out to the Cardiff Barrage and back with no hint of the events that were to unfold that evening, we stopped an had a meal and a couple of beers in the Indian restaurant and then went to the show.

The show was great we had a drink during the interval and chatted about the performance and the marvellous puppetry of the performance. Little did my bother know that within 4 hours that he would have very little recall of those events and what happened in the next 3 days. The show finished and we went back to our house in Abercarn had a coffee and the day finished like every other day and we went to bed around about midnight.

At about 2 in the morning I was awoken by my Nicky Dave’s wife saying that he was feeling unwell and would I take him to the hospital. When I asked what the matter was with him he said he didn’t really know but he had never felt like this before. He didn’t show any of the common symptoms associated with a heart attack no excessive sweating or pains in his chest or left arm and I at that time thought he genuinely had a touch of indigestion I even gave him a Gaviscon!!!

Nicky was insistent that we took him to the hospital which we did, Dave got himself to the car sat in the front with me and was still feeling unwell but completely okay. We hadn’t got half a mile down the road when the world came tumbling down. Dave literally collapsed I in the passengers seat next to me, Nicky immediately dialled 999 and they told to pull over, get Dave out of the car and start CPR the lady on the phone was brilliant and talked through everything we needed to do.

Very quickly the ambulance services arrived and took over from us, but at the same time keeping us occupied. They worked on him for 20-25 mins before they got him back, they were brilliant and ultimately, they saved his life. Having got him stable enough to move they took him straight to the Royal Gwent who stabilised him further and then sent him the Heath in Cardiff where he had a stent fitted and he was put into ITU and at 7.30 Sunday morning that’s when we saw him next.

Dave was put in an induced coma for the next 3 days and when he awoke, he has no recollection of the event that took place that evening or the preceding days from the interval of Warhorse to the Wednesday.

He has made a recovery and is now back to work it is not full as there has been damage to his heart but with tablets and monitoring, he is getting stronger. This year he was able to give his eldest daughter away at her wedding and he spends real quality time with his grandson Theo.

As you can imagine this was a traumatic set of events for the family and friends, I know its not one we will ever forget. This is why we are running the Cardiff Half Marathon for the “British Heart Foundation” this year help us raise money to help with their research. Dave himself is going to attempt it which is real progress and fantastic because if you had seen him two years ago you would never have thought that possible.

Heart failure is an increasingly common condition that affects around 920,000 people in the UK. Overall, one, five, and 10 year survival rates increased by 6.6% (from 74.2% in 2000 to 80.8% in 2016) but survival after a diagnosis of heart failure in the United Kingdom has shown only modest improvement in the 21st century and lags behind other serious conditions, such as cancer so we need to continue to fund research in order to increase survival rates because as the events on July 7th 2018 proved it can happen to anyone.

Dave is not a smoker, but has the occasional drink like us all, plays Golf and has been active all of his life and at the age of 57 we did not expect this to happen and we are glad that he survived many other don’t so please help us raise some money for this cause.