‘I’ve been shocked back to life six times by a defibrillator in my damaged heart’

A Scot has revealed how he has been shocked back to life six times with a defibrillator implanted in his heart.

Iain Trayner, 50, was given six months to live after surviving a serious heart attack when he was only 26 years old.

The dad-of-two from Stornoway said: “I was living in Swindon and working as a quality engineer for Honda’s plant when one night I felt chest pain and sickness.

“A GP suggested that at my age it was probably food poisoning and that I should take plenty of fluids. When I didn’t improve, I tried to buy an antacid from a supermarket but there was none, and I went to A&E. I was stunned when the emergency team doctors told me I was having a heart attack, caused by a blood clot in my heart. I was transferred to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Extensive tests revealed that my heart was so damaged that a transplant was being considered. No reason was ever found to cause a blood clot and heart attack at 26.”

Age was in his favour though and he improved without a new heart, but he was at risk of a cardiac arrest in future and so a tiny defibrillator was implanted into his heart. It would shock him back to life should he ever have his heart stop again.

Until then in Scotland, defibrillators had been given only to those who had suffered cardiac arrests and so he became the first to get a prophylactic one to prevent future attacks. Since 2002 his defibrillator has sprung into action and shocked him back to life six times.

“I can remember four and they feel like being kicked in the chest and your teeth start chattering,” he says. “You can also feel your heart rate going faster in the run up to the arrest. There is no time to be scared or worried, but certainly reassured after each one.”

The other arrests happened when he had already become unconscious. Long-term monitoring is carried out via a tele-link from his Lewis home to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, 112 miles away.

His wife, Emma Jane, is a cardiac nurse consultant on the island of Lewis. The couple got together years after meeting at a social event some time after he was the John Radcliffe Hospital.

He remembered her working as a nurse on his cardiac team when he was first admitted to hospital. Friendship soon blossomed into romance, then marriage, and the couple now have a son and daughter.

“It’s part of life’s rich tapestry,” he says. Today he is passing on the message of survival to others in his current job. He works in the Service Development and Improvement of Scotland’s digital health services.

It includes a Scottish Government project aimed at prompting others to look after their cardiovascular health by online monitoring of blood pressure and other vital signs.

He says he never thought he would reach 50 but he’s now healthy enough to complete a marathon walk on the bucket list of most Scots. He spent months training and then completed the 96-mile walk of the West Highland Way in seven days, so far raising more than £4,500 for the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

Much of that was made possible by being the first Scot to receive a breakthrough heart failure drug called Entresto.

It keeps the heart pumping blood well enough for patients to live an active and sporty life. He qualified as a yacht skipper last year and is chairman of Stornoway Angling Association. That led to him becoming a wildlife fisheries bailiff, helping to protect wild salmon.

Regular electronic checks are kept on his defibrillator to keep it working and ready to shock him back at a moment’s notice.

Emma Jane says it has been a long journey for the couple.

“There have been times when I never thought Iain would live. But he achieved huge milestones on a West Highland Way walk with moderate to severe heart failure … only because it is well controlled.”

The British Heart Foundation first funded a heart failure nurse on the Western Isles in 2007. It is now NHS funded.

Iain’s fundraising page is at www.gvwhl.com/PSGHB