For someone who has recently been found to have FH, the news can have a profound effect on the individual and their family. To be able to read about someone who has experienced the difficulties of living with FH on a daily basis, may be just one way of helping the newly diagnosed individual.

It is also helpful for nurses, dietitians and GP′s to learn more about genetics and to help them understand the effect that FH can have on people′s lives.

For all these reasons, we have asked several people who have FH or who have direct experience of the effects of FH, to tell us their own stories - use the links opposite to read their stories.



Angie Childs
Angie has lost two of the most important people in her life to inherited high cholesterol (IHC) and she knows only too well that it is a silent, deadly condition which shortens lives and diminishes young families. > Read more

Brian Ellis
My name is Brian Ellis and I am 63 years old. This story begins in the afternoon of a Monday in September 1998, in that, while I was talking with a friend and colleague, I suddenly felt nauseous and apparently went quite ashen. > Read more

Rachael Grady
When I look back over the last 25 years it amazes me how much things have changed. Not so much that there has been progression in healthcare generally, but that there has been progression in the one thing that affects me. The reason I feel this way is, as a 10 year old being told I had something wrong with me that I couldn′t see or feel or that no one had ever heard of, I felt as though I was the only person in the world with such a thing. > Read more

Tom Tracey
Doctor Northcote had completed his diagnosis. Until that point the most frightening thing I had heard was: "Thatcher has won again": "Rangers are odds on for nine in a row": "Bush has been elected for a second term". There had been other major events in my 54 years. The deaths of my father and most recently my brother Des saddened me but did not frighten me. Why? Because I was protected, nothing manifest, just a subliminal belief that is the prerogative of the apparently healthy. This belief is arrogance and I had it in spades.
I had it right up until that nice Dr Northcote said; "Not what I expected Tom - looks like you will need a triple bypass". > Read more

Victoria Collier
Victoria Collier called our telephone helpline in April 2006. Her husband of only three months, Peter, had recently died unexpectedly whilst playing football. He was thirty six years old. > Read more

Dawn Davies
My name is Dawn Davies. I am married with three teenage daughters. I was a nurse but have medically retired. I have severe familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH). Unfortunately for me I have inherited high cholesterol from both parents. I am not a homozygote but a compound heterozygote. Both parents′ defects have added together to make my own version. > Read more

David Fisher
I regard myself as one of the fortunate ones who have been diagnosed with FH therefore receiving the necessary treatment unlike so many poor souls who simply die suddenly and it is only afterwards that the cause is known. > Read more