Friday 12th May 2017, St Batholiumu's Hospital Central London.

It's 10am and Patrick Ward is finding it hard to concentrate on the trashy crime novel

he's reading.

Patrick is 47 years old.

He's hours away from the surgery that he hopes will change his life.

It took him a while to get to this point.

It all started a few years ago.

I was playing football and noticed the shortness of breath and I just thought it was some sort

of pain in my throat and then I went back to the doctor and he told me to stop everything.

Turns out Patrick had an enlarged heart.

It's a hereditary condition which meant his heart struggled to pump enough blood through

his body.

He'd been an active guy but now he had to take breaks just to walk up a flight of stairs.

Doctors eventually offer a solution but it's a highly risky one, open heart surgery.

Yeah, it was a major major decision.

It's also a very specialized operation and not many surgeons in the UK carry it out.

So Patrick has to wait two years in fact but eventually in May 2017 it's his turn.

I was mentally prepared to have many, many weeks off work, to have my chest cut open and

I wanted it at that point.

I was going to get my life back again.

So on that Friday when the surgeon drops by to check on him mid-morning, he's feeling

pretty upbeat.

...