Shock illness helps Jon in equality role

16 October 2024

A shock diagnosis of a life-threatening heart condition has enabled West Midlands Police Federation equality lead Jon Nott to get an even better understanding of some of the issues raised with him by members.

Jon believes living and working with the condition means he can particularly empathise with officers whose own health is affecting their careers.

“Members come to see me about their own issues due to an illness or injury and often say things like ‘you don’t know how it feels’, but I can now quite honestly say that I do and that has made a big difference in terms of my equality role,” says Jon.

“Knowing that I have faced my own health crisis, also seems to help the officers as they know I can offer invaluable advice and genuine understanding due to my own experiences.”

For Jon, that is a silver lining in what has been a rollercoaster of emotions since finding out he had heart failure.

Struggling

A fit and active sportsman, Jon had contracted a viral infection in late 2020 and was severely affected.

“I was really knocked about with it for about two weeks, constantly short of breath and I just couldn’t stop coughing,” he explained.

When months later, he was still struggling to get his breath and would find it took him some time to recover from walking up two flights of stairs to his office, he went to see his GP.

But when a range of tests didn’t pick up anything of note and he was told everything was OK, he refused to accept it, particularly since he was getting alerts about his heart rate on his Apple Watch.

In December 2023, he went back to his doctor and demanded more tests.

“I pretty much lost it in the GP’s room, telling him I knew my own body and I knew something wasn’t right. My advice to anyone now, given my own experience, would be to trust your own instincts. You know your own body, you know what is and isn’t normal for you, and if you feel something is wrong, be persistent,” Jon explains.

Reality

In his case, his determination to get to the root of the problem quite possibly saved his life.

He was referred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and saw a consultant in January this year. After a series of appointments and tests found himself sitting in a waiting room with a print-out from his ECG showing his name, date of birth and the words ‘result abnormal’. That’s when the reality of his condition began to hit home.

“It was all really shocking,” he said, “Every time I went to the hospital for an appointment, I would look round the waiting room and see that, at 48, I was the youngest one in the room, by far and often by around 20 years.”

He was finally diagnosed with an acute form of cardiomyopathy. At this point, his heart was only working at 10 per cent of its capacity and he remembers visiting his in-laws on the south coast and struggling to walk a quarter of a mile in about 20 minutes.

The devastating diagnosis was quite hard to take, given that Jon had always been lean, regularly played five-a-side football and had - in December 2019 - achieved a black belt in kickboxing.

Waiting list

Once his condition had been identified, he was put under the care of the advanced heart failure team, sent home, told to do no exercise and put on a waiting list for a pacemaker and internal defibrillator, but he was not given an indication of how long it would be before he was called in for treatment.

“Initially, I didn’t tell anyone at work, just the branch secretary, Tim Rogers, who was very supportive. I just felt sheer panic and it got to the point where I would go to bed thinking, ‘am I going to wake up in the morning?’.”

Shortly after being put on the waiting list, he was home alone while his wife, Emma, was away with friends, when he woke up at around 3am with a racing heart and breathlessness.

“I was getting heart palpitations, chest pains and felt really light-headed,” Jon recalls.

He was admitted to hospital and hooked up to a defibrillator by doctors clearly concerned about how unwell he was.

Recovery

Specialists advised almost immediate surgery, and his operation went ahead on 30 April.

After a period of recovery, he has now returned to work, on restricted duties, and is starting to exercise again, even managing to play five-a-side.

“I am building up my fitness again, and I am able to live a fairly normal life now,” says Jon.

He is thankful that, as a member of the West Midlands Police Federation Group Insurance Scheme, he is able to claim under the critical illness cover, which is something he advises all members to look into if they find themselves in a similar situation.

“I think everyone is aware that the critical illness cover is there for cancer patients or those with other illnesses and conditions that are more talked about, but it also covers so much more,” Jon explains.

“So, if you are in the unfortunate position of facing something like I did, please make sure you check out the cover.”

The insurance pay-out will give Jon and his wife more financial security and enable them to offer extra financial support to their son and daughter, who are both in further education.

Jon concluded with a message to colleagues who might be reeling after being diagnosed with a serious illness.

“It doesn’t have to be the end of your career. Following treatment, I am now able to provide full, meaningful work for West Midlands Police and the Federation,” he said.