After struggling with breathlessness and a racing heartbeat for months, Bo Okenla was blue lighted to hospital and diagnosed with a life changing condition.

In November 2021, the then 28-year-old collapsed at home and found out she was in acute heart failure, which is when the heart fails to pump enough blood around the body.

It only took around three months from when Bo started noticing her symptoms until she was rushed to A&E but looking back, she realises there were earlier signs.

“I can remember times when they told me I’d had anxiety, but I would literally just be walking in the street, and I wouldn’t be able to breathe and I’d almost black out. And I realise now that those were moments when it wasn’t anxiety or panic disorder, it was something wrong with my heart,” Bo explains.

As many people, Bo had gained a bit of weight over the COVID-19 lockdown. Although she wasn’t eating much because she was struggling to swallow, she put it down to being stuck inside. Eventually her symptoms of breathlessness and a rapid heartbeat made her go to her GP, where she was told she had asthma and was sent home with an inhaler.

But the inhaler didn’t help, and Bo was still concerned it might be something more serious.

“I was just so mentally exhausted, I didn’t think I could push anymore,” Bo says.

In the meantime, she started feeling worse.

“I would stop breathing in my sleep. My heart was always racing, I couldn’t swallow properly, and my lungs were crackling. I would walk a few steps and be breathing like I’d run a marathon. I was gaining so much weight and clothes stopped fitting, even though I wasn’t eating.”

“I’d almost given up on the evening that I was taken to hospital because I hadn’t been sleeping very much because I felt like I wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t want to fall asleep and not wake up,” she continues.

Bo was on her way to her sister’s room to ask her advice when she collapsed. She couldn’t breathe and she describes how her heartbeat “was literally shaking my body.”  At the hospital she was finally diagnosed with heart failure, caused by dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition which affects the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body.

Heart failure means the heart is unable to pump enough blood around the body. Unfortunately, it’s a long-term condition that gets gradually worse over time.

“I didn’t understand that there wasn’t a cure until I started reading and I broke down in tears,” Bo says.

She explains her diagnosis has changed her as a person, and no part of her life has been left unaffected. But although her future looks more uncertain now, Bo is grateful for the medications that are available.

“I’m really grateful that I have this medication because I know that even just a decade ago, my situation would have been very different. I started off on the older medications, but these new ones I’m on now are definitely better,” she explains.