A MAN who was suffering from a serious heart attack says he was advised by the ambulance service to have ‘a glass of water and get himself to the hospital.’

Mark Burden, 52, was at his home in Baildon when he started to get symptoms of a heart attack; his partner had gone out to walk the dog in Ilkley when he called to tell her he was feeling unwell.

Mark said: “I wasn’t feeling very well, I had pains going down my arm and feeling dizzy.

“My partners’ son, who was at the house, called the Ambulance service and described my symptoms.

“The Ambulance advisor told him to offer me a glass of water and to get me to make my way to the hospital.

“Usually, my wife takes the dog to the moors but that day she decided to go for a walk around Ilkley because it was really windy, and luckily, she was able to get back to me in 15 minutes; had she gone to the moors I wouldn’t have been able to get in contact with her.

“We made our way to BRI and thankfully it’s not too far away from us.

“When we told the people at the hospital the advice we were given, they were shocked and couldn’t believe that an ambulance hadn’t been sent to me.

“The staff at BRI were brilliant and got to me straight away.”

Mark suffered from the rarest type of heart attack on December 29, known as a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD), and had to be transferred from the BRI to the LGI for a stent to be placed in his heart.

Mark continued: “A heart attack is a category one emergency, and an ambulance should have been sent out to me.

“I was kept in overnight at the LGI and spent four days at the BRI.

“A couple of days after the heart attack, I was getting severe chest pains and had another procedure done to make sure that the stent was working.

“Everything looked fine, so they put it down to inflammation of the heart and put me on more medication.

“I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life now, blood thinners among other things to make sure the vessel in my heart stays open so the blood can flow through properly.

“I was told to stay off work for four weeks, but I’ll be back next Wednesday hopefully.”

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust said: “We are sorry to learn that concerns have been raised about our response to this patient and would encourage the family to get in touch with our Patient Relations Team so we can liaise with them directly about specific details relating to this.

“We understand the patient is recovering at home and we wish him well.

“Like all other ambulance services across the country, we have been experiencing significant operational pressures for some time and, whilst our dedicated staff are doing their best to respond as quickly as possible to all emergencies, we acknowledge that some patients are having to wait longer for an ambulance response.”

A similar incident occurred elsewhere in Yorkshire, where a man had to make his own way to the hospital at 2am as there wasn’t an ambulance in a 20-mile radius of his home in Norton.

Graham Reagan, 60 had suffered symptoms of a heart attack at 2am when his wife, Anna Wallace, called 999. She was told that there weren’t any ambulances in the area and was told to get her husband to the hospital.

Their 26-year-old son Charlie had to drive them to the hospital and Anna had to help Graham walk for eight minutes, from the multi-storey car park to the hospital’s entrance while he was having a heart attack.

Upon arrival, the medical staff confirmed that Graham was having a heart attack and sent him through to the resuscitation area where he had an initial treatment before he was transferred to Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham, Hull.

The couple took to Twitter to thank the NHS; Graham tweeted “I owe my life to the fantastic NHS staff in York A&E and Castle Hill in Hull, despite no ambulance available and a pandemic they still are saving lives. They deserve better than @Borisjohnson party gate surely.”