Mark warns: ‘Don’t ignore the signs’

When Mark Hitchcock was diagnosed with serious cardiovascular disease and told he needed a triple heart bypass, he was stunned. One moment he was walking down Cowes High Street with his partner Jackie. The next, a doctor was on the phone explaining that tests showed three major artery blockages and that surgery was crucial.

“Two minutes before that I’d been joking about lunch,” Mark said. “Then suddenly my whole life turned upside down; it was like taking a bullet. I began to feel like a ticking time bomb, waking up wondering if today was the day I’d have a heart attack.”

In the months before his diagnosis, Mark had noticed signs something wasn’t right and visited his GP. “I was getting breathless and tired,” he explained. “I had shoulder pain I thought was muscular, I’d lost weight and couldn’t concentrate properly. You just put it down to stress or getting older.”

He was prompted to act when his smartwatch revealed dramatic changes in his heart rate, ranging from 220 to 34 beats per minute.

Mark was admitted to St Mary’s Hospital and spent weeks waiting to be transferred to the mainland for surgery, an ordeal he described as ‘one of the hardest parts about living on the Island’.

The emotional impact was as challenging as the physical. “Sometimes you have to accept that it isn’t fine. It’s terrifying,” he said. While in hospital, Mark began writing to process his thoughts, and a friend even brought in his bass guitar to lift his spirits.

Now fully recovered, Mark has self-published The Beat Goes On at iw.observer/the-beat-book and sent copies to cardiac wards across the South. He hopes it will encourage others to take early warning signs seriously and seek medical advice sooner.