Shortly after I was told I would need a heart transplant, in August 2014, a cardiac nurse visited my house. She scanned the room and noticed my exercise equipment. "You're not going to use that are you?", she asked me. "Yes", I replied, "why?"

My heart was operating at 13 percent and I was firmly told I couldn't be doing that sort of thing in my condition. The nurse said she would send round a physiotherapist called Nikki Simpson to tell me what I could and couldn't do while doctors tried to figure out what was going on with my heart.

"Nikki Simpson?" I asked. It couldn't be. The woman I had once known with the same name was training to be a hairdresser, plus she'd married and moved away.

We had first met as teenagers at a club in the north of England in 1984. I had wavy shoulder length hair and she always had some sort of red leather gear on. Usually, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to flirting, but I could tell she liked me straight away.

We dated for about six months. I didn't drink much so we would go on long drives and spend time with mutual friends, but for some reason the relationship just fizzled out. Nothing bad happened, we just drifted apart.

I lived a bachelor life for a while. Eventually I got married and had my son, Robert. Nikki got married and had a baby girl. We only lived a village away from each other but I never saw her once.

When my son was eight my first marriage broke down and I cared for Robert. It was the hardest thing to do, but we had the best time of our lives. I did date when my son was younger, but nobody seemed to understand that Robert came first.

For years I'd been extremely fit, I was a plasterer by trade and had always had physical jobs. But in February, 2014, when I was doing some work putting up billboards in Leeds, I couldn't breathe and kept falling to my knees.

I visited the emergency room with my sister. I was told I had pneumonia and given a course of antibiotics. I took them for two weeks but still couldn't breathe properly, so I was told it was likely I had a respiratory condition and to visit my doctor.

After months of being referred to and from the hospital, my doctor told me he thought I had heart failure. He organized an MRI scan which showed my heart was globally dilated and operating at a fraction of its normal function. They said it was likely down to a virus, but had no idea which one.

I went back the next week and the doctor sat there, clicking away on his keyboard. He glanced across at me and said: "We need to discuss a heart transplant." There I was, this strapping Yorkshireman who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't do anything untoward, who has a dodgy heart. I stopped listening to anything he said. I went back to my doctor who told me to stop whatever I was doing, go home and watch TV on the sofa.

I started going for various scans and a cardiac nurse began to visit me and curate my drugs, which is when she mentioned about a physio helping me.

One day in August 2014, this nurse she knocked on the door and said "The physio is on her way, but I need to ask your permission for her to treat you because you have a history." I said it was fine.

When Nikki knocked on my door, I swung it open and shouted "f*** off!" I grabbed her, sat her on the kitchen table and gave her a big kiss on the cheek.

It just sort of took off from there. We started seeing each other when she came round to treat me. I would go to the gym with her to do exercises and she would call round for a cup of tea in the evenings.

Robert was doing his first year at university studying aeronautical engineering and I was concerned because he was driving a fair distance home every day just so I wasn't at home by myself. Eventually, Nikki said she'd move in with me so Robert could go and live the dream.

It was ace having her around. Even at this point, when I thought I was dying and there was no cure for me, it was like this angel had walked through the door and made my life better.

The relationship with Nikki was great, but I was going to the hospital a lot. The tablets used to steady you and make you comfortable I just couldn't tolerate. I got to the stage where I spent so much time in the hospital the porters recognised me.

It looked like I was going to die. I had a mate who had his suit washed three times for my funeral. Whenever I saw him he would say: "Are you still here?"

In October 2017, we were watching TV when an interview with the Heart Cells Foundation came on. They'd created a stem-cell procedure which took bone marrow from a patient's pelvis then injected it straight into the heart. I wanted it.

The next day I phoned them and they said to come down for some tests. I qualified for the procedure and in November 2018 went down to St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and had the treatment. It changed my life overnight.

This horrific thing I was thinking about; someone dying and me taking their heart, wasn't going to happen anymore. That was three and a half years ago. I had thought I was going to be dead in months without a transplant.

From day one of leaving the hospital, I haven't had any problems at all. I go down for a yearly check up and the consultant wants me to have the treatment again. They've never done it twice but think they might get some good results.

Nikki has been ace throughout all of this. We're looking to get married next year. I didn't want to get married before the treatment. I didn't want to be pushed down the aisle in a wheelchair or go for a meal after and end up in an ambulance. But, now, I'm getting fit, strong and strapping, so we want to go with it.

Looking back, it seems so strange that Nikki and I parted ways. I don't know if I believe in fate, but since I was first told I'd need a heart transplant we've lost my dad, my brother, two aunties and Nikki's dad. All these people who have gone, I was supposed to go before them. My perspective on life has always been to live it today, because you don't know what's going to come tomorrow.

Barry Newman, 55, from Wakefield, was a plasterer before undergoing pioneering treatment with the Heart Cells Foundation, an independent charity which has run a small unit at St Bartholomew's Hospital since 2016. Earlier this year he carried the baton at the Commonwealth Games relay.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Monica Greep

Link:
'My Teen Sweetheart And I Drifted Apart. 30 Years Later I Made a Shocking Discovery' - Newsweek