The GP was worried I’d been hit, but my bruises are caused by blackouts
A quarter of people will suffer one, but, as jazz singer Natalie Rushdie found, it can be hard to track down the cause
When natalie Rushdie went to the GP last year with bumps on her head and ‘bruises everywhere’, they suspected the worst — that her husband, Zafar, was to blame.
‘Zaf, who’d brought me, was asked to come into the surgery as the GP wanted to question him,’ recalls the 31-year-old jazz singer. ‘There were queries about my injuries but they soon realised I’d not been beaten with a baseball bat.’
In fact, natalie had experienced a blackout, hitting her head on the bathroom tiles as she fell. And this was not the first time it had happened.
For half her life, natalie has had terrifying, sudden blackouts, putting her in danger of serious injury as she topples to the ground. ‘There’s a second before I collapse when I don’t feel 100 per cent,’ she says. It’s so fleeting she can’t put her finger on the ‘strange’ feeling — ‘but there’s nothing else to warn me’.
The next thing she knows she’s coming to, feeling ‘spaced- out’. ‘I am out for about two minutes but I am not “with it” for some time after, often not even knowing what day it is.’
natalie was 16 when she had her first blackout, during a trip to the British Museum with her mother. ‘I was saying to her “I don’t feel . . .” and just like that,’ she says, snapping her fingers, ‘I collapsed, luckily landing on Mum’s foot, otherwise it would have been the concrete floor. I woke to find Mum splashing me with water.’
This happened a few times until her early 20s. ‘everyone brushed it off, suggesting I probably hadn’t eaten enough, lacked salt or was dehydrated, so I didn’t even see a GP,’ she recalls.
It seemed they were right, for she had no more episodes for several years. But four years ago, it started again, and as a classically trained jazz singer wellversed in the importance of staying hydrated and eating well, it was clear something else was going on.
‘The first fall I really worried about was in 2014, four years after Zaf and I got together,’ she says. ‘he heard a thud as he was going out to work, and finding me unconscious, called an ambulance.
‘At hospital they said I was probably dehydrated. There were a couple more falls before we moved here,’ she says, indicating the bright kitchen with a vintage jukebox in the corner at the couple’s home in Chiswick, West London.
‘Then, a couple of years ago, I blacked out and fell on my head in our bathroom. Zaf found me and insisted we went to the doctor who again told me to check I was drinking enough water.’
Luckily all the recent blackouts have happened when she has been at home with Zafar. ‘It’s scary to see natalie go through this,’ he says. The 39-year- old, who runs his own marketing agency, is Sir Salman Rushdie’s eldest son; his mother was the author’s first wife, Clarissa Luard. The marriage ended before Iran proclaimed a fatwa against Sir Salman after he published The Satanic Verses and went into hiding.
‘I have to hope natalie is in a safe place when it happens,’ he continues. natalie admits: ‘I have really bad anxiety that it will happen when I’m out and alone. At home I never lock the bathroom door and never sleep in the house alone if Zaf is away.’
With a family history of heart problems, natalie began to wonder if there was a link. ‘Both my grandfathers died of out- of-theblue heart attacks, one at 49, the other at 50. My dad, who’s still alive, was a boxer and got pulled out of the Commonwealth Games because of a heart murmur. But unless something physically happens, your heart’s not checked.’
Blackouts, or syncope, are very common, explains Professor nicholas Linker, a consultant cardiologist at James Cook University hospital in Middlesbrough.
‘At least a quarter of the population will have an episode in a lifetime,’ he adds. ‘They’re most common in teens and young adults and from middle age on — typically they’re caused by a problem with heart rhythm or blood pressure dropping.’
Both reduce blood flow to the brain. Blackouts can also be triggered by heat, sudden pain, an unpleasant sight, dehydration and lack of food. Professor Linker says it’s important to seek medical advice to rule out serious causes.
In September last year, natalie fell in the bathroom and came to ‘in my own urine and sweat’ and was finally referred for brain and heart tests. Rather than wait for nhS brain tests, natalie had them done privately, which ruled out epilepsy or other conditions.
The heart investigations, on the nhS, revealed another, unrelated issue. As natalie says: ‘I was on my own and the woman doing the echocardiogram [ultrasound of the heart] said: “You’ve got two holes in your heart”. She said it could cause my heart to become enlarged and tear. I thought: “I’m a ticking timebomb”.’
however, in February this year an nhS cardiologist said she didn’t have holes in her heart — but that two of the valves weren’t working properly, allowing blood to leak in the wrong direction.
‘It’s not a huge amount of blood that is leaking,’ she says. It’s not the cause of her blackouts but has been a source of anxiety.
The blackouts unresolved, natalie was given an implanted monitor to check for a faulty heart rhythm. The Reveal LInQ recorder is the width of two matchsticks and is implanted just under the skin in the upper chest — it records the heart’s electrical activity over months or years, depending on frequency of blackouts.
It is implanted under local anaesthetic during a five-minute outpatient procedure. But for natalie it was not straightforward. ‘I could feel pressure on my chest and the nurse kept pushing so it really hurt. She called in the consultant and it took 40 minutes.’ Five days later the site started to bleed and natalie had to return to hospital for stitches. Just 12 days after it was put in, she had the implant removed because the wound was infected.
‘I was sent home with antibiotics and still felt lethargic and sick,’ she recalls. Professor Linker, the first in the UK to use the monitor, in 2014, says such infections occur in only one per cent of patients.
Doctors want to give her another LInQ in six months. ‘I’m not sure I want one again and for now I’m in limbo land,’ natalie says.
Zafar says his father Sir Salman has been very concerned. ‘he’s a big part of natalie’s life and they get on very well. he was extremely worried and has been a great sounding board for her.’
Thankfully, her big jazz voice hasn’t been affected and she’s resolutely upbeat. ‘I am an optimist,’ she says with a bright smile.
There’s no doubting her steel. ‘It made me laugh when doctors said the fainting might be due to not being used to stress. I’ve performed five times at Wembley to 90,000 people with a camera in my face. I’m very ambitious about my career. nothing will stop me.’
Natalie is supporting World Heart Day (September 29). Go to world-heart-federation.org. tickets for an evening with Natalie Rushdie at the Other Palace theatre in london from theotherpalace.co.uk