Surfer’s shock after discovering he had a hole in his heart following a stroke
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Daniel Satchell from Hove had returned from a working holiday in South Korea when he suddenly felt tired and a pain developed in his leg.
“I was pretty whacked when it was time to come home – a direct flight from South Korea to Heathrow,” he said.
“I’m normally aware that I need to get up and about on a long haul but I was just so tired. I stayed in my seat watched some films and slept. My leg was stiff and sore but I thought nothing more of it.
“A couple of days later I was in a cafe in Hove with my wife Suzi and I was saying to her how my leg was feeling worse, hot, aching. She googled straight away and we thought, ‘this could be DVT’.”
DVT stands for deep vein thrombosis and is a blood clot that develops within a deep vein in the body.
Daniel said: “I went to A&E in Brighton and sure enough they made a diagnosis that it was DVT.
“I was given an injection with instructions to run a course of injections over the next seven days to thin the blood and recover.”
But things took a turn for the worse though when the 42-year-old made his usual trip to the gym.
“When I came back from the gym I didn’t feel right,” he said.
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“I remember running up the stairs when I got back and I was really out of breath. I went to meet a friend in Brighton and when I got there, I was slurring my words and I couldn’t really think straight, I didn’t really recognise what was happening. My friend got me a taxi and I was back in A&E again.”
Daniel was told that he may have had a stroke – and a hole in his heart.
Ingrid Kane, consultant stroke physician at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and one of the clinical leads in the Sussex Stroke Integrated Delivery Network, said: “After assessing Daniel’s condition and arranging for him to have several tests, he was diagnosed with several small strokes.
“It is unusual to have stroke caused by a blood clot in the leg because these parts of the circulation are usually separate. Daniel’s symptoms made me think that there might be a hole in his heart, which allowed the blood clot to travel from his leg to his brain where it caused a stroke.
“This was a good outcome for Daniel as we found the cause of his stroke quickly and can sort out his treatment to prevent it happening again.
“It just shows that a stroke can affect anyone – even young, fit, active people like Daniel.
Daniel is now on the road to recovery.
“The care I received was great, the clinical staff there, the doctors, everyone, were so good with me,” he said.
“I am fit and well and will be 100 per cent recovered from the DVT and the stroke soon enough.
“I won’t be surfing for a while and next time I fly long haul I will be up and about most of the flight.”
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