AN ICONIC red bench has been unveiled in tribute to a Malvern man who underwent a heart transplant after being diagnosed with multiple organ failure following two heart attacks.
Clint Heaton, 57, a retired health and beauty business owner from Great Malvern has been honoured with a British Heart Foundation ‘red bench’ in the grounds of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he underwent his successful transplant in October 2023.
He is one of 65 people UK-wide with cardiovascular disease, who have had a red bench erected in ‘living memory’ of their survival.
The red benches mark 65 years of BHF funding lifesaving research.
Clint was a regular gym goer with no family history of cardiovascular disease. He was about to set off for his morning gym session in April 2023 when he suffered his first heart attack at home.
He said: “I was coming down the stairs, and I got an excruciating pain in my chest. I was sweating with water pouring out of me like someone had turned a tap on. I couldn’t understand what was going on.
“Suddenly I got very hot and literally had to strip down to my shorts, then I had to rush to the toilet, because I thought I was going to be sick.”
Clint called his ex-wife Anna with whom he remained great friends, who drove over with their teenage son and called an ambulance.
Clint was taken to Worcestershire Royal Hospital where doctors carried out an angiogram that showed he had two blood clots in a main artery. They performed a routine procedure to fit stents before discharging him.
Two months later Clint felt another pain in his chest that he recognised immediately as a second heart attack. He called an ambulance that took him back to the same hospital where they found that one of the stents had moved causing another clot.
He was told his heart function had dropped to just 17.5 per cent. Clint spent the next few months in and out of hospital as his health declined rapidly.
He lost over four stone in muscle weight and had difficulty breathing because he had developed heart failure.
By October 2023 he was in such poor health that he was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Birmingham where he was told that his organs were failing and his only chance of survival was to undergo a heart transplant.
Clint spent six weeks in the hospital’s critical care unit before a donor heart became available in late November.
He was able to spend Christmas day with Anna, her partner, Dave and his two children. Clint was finally discharged a few days later.
Clint said: “Before the transplant as I lay there in QEH, there were days when I really believed I was going to die and I was very close to it.
“I cannot put into words the support I had from Anna and Dave and my children and my mum and dad. I am an incredibly lucky man. I treasure my heart and I treasure them all.
“It will be nice to be able to always go to the bench and sit and reflect on everything I’ve been through. It’s been a very long tough road back to health, but I am well today in a way that I never thought possible.
“I hope that others who are going through the hardest times can go to that bench and get some strength from my story. I am a stronger man now and a better man.
“All my life I was trying to chase something or get somewhere or get something, but now I have a totally different outlook on life. I stepped back and realised that I forgot to just enjoy the journey.
“That’s what I’m doing now. I’m enjoying the journey and I want this bench to be a place where people can give and get hope.”
