After surviving three massive heart attacks, TV presenter Sally Bee is looking forward to a spicier life, writes PAUL O'DOHERTY
LYING IN a hospital theatre surrounded by doctors and nurses trying to save your life when you’ve just had three massive heart attacks is certainly traumatic. It gets unbelievably surreal if the medical professions down tools, throw their hands in the air, embarrassingly in defeat, and walk off the job leaving you lying on your trolley.
When your husband arrives at your side crying uncontrollably and tells you there’s nothing they can do, that “you’re going to die” and says “goodbye”, the evidence begins to stack up that there is little hope for survival.
That’s what happened to television presenter Sally Bee when, without warning, the main artery in her heart fell apart, which meant that her blood was leaking away. In real terms her heart was bleeding and being starved of blood and oxygen. Problem was, her medical team hadn’t quite put their finger on it.
“Spontaneous coronary artery dissection [SCAD] is a very rare condition and none of my team had ever seen it before. There have only been 130 recorded cases worldwide and only 30 people have survived. And, so they just thought, ‘she’s going to die, that’s it’, sent my husband in to say ‘goodbye’ and they all left.
“It’s strange, but since then I’ve been with people who died and saw what happened to them. When you’re in that situation you tend to turn in on yourself and lose connection with the outside world. In my case, when they walked out I started to prepare for what was going to happen.
“However, when my husband, Dogan, told me I was going to die, I started to think about the children, Tarik, Kazim and Lela – all under five at the time – and got some ‘fight about me’ and that jump-started my life again.”
Despite this, Bee’s medical team were not convinced she was going to survive the night, not having grasped that she had SCAD. However, as the days passed, it became obvious she was refusing to give up.
“So much so that by the fifth day I demanded they wash my hair. They were saying, ‘no, we couldn’t possibly do that’, but I made them do it and then I made them find me some pink lipstick – all those beautifully superficial things became really important and kept me going.”
Luckily for Bee, her cardiology team who were “researching madly” discovered on her angiogram that her main artery had come unravelled. They found out more speaking to cardiologists in the US, told her what was happening, that it was unlikely to happen again, and two weeks later she was at home on critical recovery.
“They expect you back in hospital one way or another during this period, on a stretcher or in a box. I was lucky although it took me two years to get my strength back physically. Emotionally, it’s taken me a lot longer.”
All of this was very surprising to the 36-year-old Bee as prior to the attacks she was fit, proactively health conscious and very much into healthy eating. Although the heart attacks weren’t caused by an unhealthy diet or a lazy lifestyle, my recovery was certainly helped by the fact that I was fit beforehand.
“After my recovery, I started counselling other heart patients and found out one of their biggest complaints was finding tasty food they could eat. So, I started giving them some recipes and some good nutritional advice I’d built up over the years. Eventually, I had enough recipes for a book which I self-published to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation. Somehow the White House ordered 12 copies and with further successes Harper Collins picked up on it and decided to publish it this year.
“The recipes are all family-friendly, affordable, quick and tasty. We’ve been trying to find out if Barack or my ‘new best friend’ Michelle have seen the book although we’ve been invited to visit the White House garden and kitchen when we’re in the States later this year.”
With a background in television and commercials, presenting Pulling Power, a motoring programme for ITV, and working for QVC, the shopping channel, and now a best-selling cookery book on her CV, not surprisingly, Freemantle Media – Jamie Oliver’s producers – are putting her in front of the camera in her own cookery television series later this year.
Listening to Bee recall this life-threatening experience, you’d expect her to say that her “secret ingredient” is buckets of luck but it’s more straightforward than that.
“It’s simply a little bit of exercise and healthy eating. That doesn’t mean going to the gym or getting dressed in Lycra. It means going for a walk and doing your supermarket shopping a little quicker.”
As we speak Sally Bee has a bad cold which has taken away her sense of taste. Any recipe from her book that might help a cold? “Well, at the moment I can’t taste anything, so, I’m on the Magnificent Moroccan Chicken which is really tasty, although I’ve had to make it really spicy.
“Really spicy” is almost a moniker for Bee’s new life. With a new book in the pipeline and a TV series that should hit the channels within the year, it’s not hard to imagine that she’ll be remembered for a lot more than the woman who cheated SCAD.
To read more about Sally Bee and her ideas on healthy living, see sally-bee.com
SPONTANEOUS CORONARY ARTERY DISSECTION (SCAD): WHAT IS IT?
Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is one of those very rare conditions that occurs mostly (83 per cent) in young, healthy women. Symptoms are very similar to a heart attack. It happens when the coronary artery tears or falls apart, allowing blood to leak.
Evidence as to causes might include female hormone levels, hypertension or even exercising. While data is divided as to fatality rates, an angioplasty is generally used to diagnose the condition, usually after the patient has died. Fortunately, you’ve more chance of winning every lottery or bet you place than waking up to find you have SCAD.
