Abigail Louise, 36, is speaking out after years of being dismissed by doctors as anxious finally ended with a diagnosis of a rare congenital heart defect.
The mother of two from the UK visited her GP repeatedly between 2021 and 2025 complaining of breathlessness, fatigue, and a racing heartbeat, only to be referred to therapy five or six times for what physicians insisted was anxiety. She told Talk to the Press that her symptoms first surfaced during her birthday celebrations in 2021, when she noticed a “weird heart rhythm” and a red mark on her leg, followed by shortness of breath and vomiting.
She had struggled since childhood to keep up with other children and recalled always having blue lips “even if it wasn’t cold.” Despite these warning signs, medical professionals repeatedly told her she was experiencing panic attacks. After one emergency room visit following an ambulance call, she says doctors diagnosed a panic attack even though a scan showed she had right bundle branch block, a condition where electrical impulses in the heart are delayed or blocked.
“I said, ‘but no, I didn’t, there was nothing to panic about, it doesn’t fit or feel right’,” she told Talk to the Press. “I thought nothing of it and thought maybe I had had a panic attack, I didn’t know what it is. It snowballed after that, I had fatigue every day. I felt like I was going to faint more, I was frequently breathless.”
Her condition deteriorated steadily. The avid gym-goer, who had worked out three or four times weekly, found herself unable to maintain any exercise routine. She gained weight and developed an increased need to use the toilet. Each return to her GP over four years brought the same response.
“I went back to the GP over the space of four years numerous times and said ‘there’s something wrong’,” she recounted. “I said a panic attack doesn’t cause me being unable to walk upstairs. They kept saying I had anxiety and I had trained my brain to think this now.”
The therapy providers themselves were baffled by her repeated referrals. “They [therapy providers] said we don’t understand, you’re not depressed, you don’t have anxiety, we don’t understand why you keep being referred to us,” Abigail said.
Everything changed in December 2024, when Abigail found herself unable to climb a single flight of stairs at work and experienced “shooting” chest pain. She rushed to her local hospital’s emergency room, where tests revealed both the right bundle branch block and a suspected heart murmur. Cardiology specialists ordered a 24-hour ECG and echocardiogram, which uncovered a leaking heart valve. When a local specialist detected “something else” wrong, she was referred to Royal Brompton Hospital in London, where doctors confirmed she had Ebstein’s anomaly.
The rare congenital defect, characterized by a malformed tricuspid valve that affects blood flow between the heart’s chambers, can cause improper valve closure and allow blood to leak back into the upper chambers. Abigail learned just how unusual her condition was. “I was told by Brompton that Ebstein’s anomaly is very, very rare and only three surgeons in the UK had ever done the operation to fix it,” she says.
She shed 10kg to lower her surgical risk before undergoing a nine-hour cone procedure on May 29, in which surgeons reconstructed her tricuspid valve using her own tissue. The operation proved more complicated than anticipated. “It wasn’t as easy as they thought and it would be a nine-hour operation instead of six,” Abigail explained. “Afterwards I got pneumonia and my lungs collapsed because of the bypass, which is known to happen. My heart went into complete heart block.”
Her recovery took unexpected turns. “Two weeks after surgery they thought ‘should we put her a pacemaker in or should we leave it a bit longer’ and then magically my heart came into a rhythm,” she said. She spent four weeks hospitalized before discharge in mid-June.
Now nine weeks post-operation, Abigail is looking ahead to 12 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation starting at the end of August. She expressed profound relief mixed with lingering uncertainty about her future. “I don’t know where I’m going to go in recovery, whether I’ll make a full recovery and be doing cartwheels again or have a slower pace of life,” she shared. “But I’m optimistic it will be good either way because two years ago I didn’t know if I’d even be here.”
She remains stunned that the condition went undetected through two pregnancies and 36 years of life. “I don’t know how I got to 36 without it being found. I don’t know how I went through two pregnancies without it being found,” she said. “It’s so rare they [doctors] can’t figure out if it’s completely random or hereditary. There are around 40,000 people in the world with it at the moment and most of them are babies. Sitting in the hospital bed the day before my surgery was the scariest part.”
In the viral moment that sparked widespread attention to medical gaslighting, Abigail’s story of being repeatedly sent to therapy while suffering from an undiagnosed life-threatening heart condition has resonated with thousands online who have shared similar experiences of having serious symptoms dismissed as anxiety or panic disorders.
“Those nurses who were on my ward are absolute angels,” Abigail added. “I’m nine weeks post-op now. I’m doing really well, everything has recovered.”
Abigail’s NHS trust were contacted for comment.