“Jane, you’re having a heart attack.”
That was what I heard in A&E at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary in March 2024.
It was a bolt from the blue. How on earth had I got here?
I considered myself fit. Yet, days before a trip to Iceland with my eldest son, Will, I struggled to walk upstairs. I explained it away: age, fitness, anything but illness.
Carrying a ten-kilogram camera pack, I became breathless and felt chest pain. I blamed the bag! Days later, after struggling up hotel stairs, I felt tingling down my arm while walking in Reykjavik.
My response? I would get it checked when I got home.
I carried on.
The life I was carrying
At the time, I was rebuilding my consultancy, Jane Fisher Associates, post-Covid.
I loved working in strategy, leadership and change. But running a micro-business also meant constant communication, promotion, networking and uncertainty.
At home, someone I loved was struggling with an undiagnosed mental-health condition. There was anger, defensiveness and a loss of empathy - totally out of character.
Because we lived far from family, my business community became an important source of connection and energy. I kept pushing myself harder and did not recognise the cumulative effect of all that emotional and professional strain. I had become good at being capable.
Even on that fateful day, when a doctor I was working with told me, “If you were my patient, I would send you to A&E immediately,” I finished my work and went home.
It was only when I became breathless while sitting down that I finally admitted something was seriously wrong. I rang my brother, a GP, who told me to call 999.
The paramedic arrived, saw my abnormal ECG, looked me in the eye and told me I was going to hospital - now!
That night, the A&E cardiologist told me I was having a heart attack.
A new normal
I spent more than a week in coronary care. My heart muscle was thickened, but an angiogram showed no significant blockage in the coronary arteries.
Doctors initially suspected hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - a genetic condition. Suddenly, I was being told not to go anywhere alone or walk off the beaten track.
I was 60 and lived in the middle of the North Pennines. Walking in the hills was part of who I was. It felt as though my old life had been taken away.
Two and a half years later, following a second MRI, my consultant told me my heart had fully recovered and was back to normal. Happy days! He believed excessive, particularly emotional, stress had probably caused the thickening of my heart muscle. Sustained high blood pressure, raised cortisol and adrenaline had placed my body under pressure, contributing to the heart-muscle changes, abnormal ECG and raised troponin levels that initially suggested a heart attack.
Stress was no longer something I simply felt. It had become something my body was expressing physically - a silent and potentially dangerous force.
Choosing differently
The experience made me think about mortality in a way I never had before. I did not want to spend the rest of my life simply coping, performing and carrying on.
During my recovery, Will suggested that we create a calendar and exhibition of our Iceland photography, raising money for the British Heart Foundation and Cardiomyopathy UK. It gave me purpose when I badly needed it.
Volunteering with Northumberland National Park got me out of the house and meeting others, while research showed me how to bring the outdoors into my work. I had spent years helping leaders navigate strategy, leadership, change and transformation. Now I had to lead change in my own life.
Fresh Perspectives North East grew from that process. It was not simply a business pivot. It was a reorientation towards work that combines strategic leadership consultancy, one-to-one coaching and facilitation with my love of nature, movement and meaningful conversation.
The outdoors became my co-facilitator, helping leaders and their teams think more clearly and creatively, build stronger connections, have better conversations and navigate change effectively. And that work gives me genuine joy.
It also gave me new confidence in the value of my voice. I was invited to share my insights on podcasts, in Northern Insights and through BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Look North, discussing leadership, the outdoors and women’s heart health - evidence that my experience could be useful to others.
But changing my work was only part of it.
I had to set boundaries, have difficult conversations and stop assuming loyalty meant endlessly absorbing pressure. Indeed, some professional relationships or situations needed distance.
Becoming Jane
Then came New Zealand in July: a solo adventure in two halves, beginning with photography and ending with a discovery road trip.
I faced personal fears, including heights that made my knees wobble, and driving alone through remote places, sometimes seeing few cars for hours. Yet I soon found myself becoming decisive, curious, enthused talking to locals and adventurous again.
For those weeks, I was not the businesswoman, mother, wife, sister or friend. I was simply Jane. And I discovered what made her tick.
I am not ready to retire from working life. But I am moving into my “Into the Aurora” phase - a time of light, energy, creativity, adventure and purpose. I have even earned the nickname “Action Gran” after tackling a BMX track and climbing wall.
And I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to re-evaluate my life, although I would not recommend a heart crisis as the route to get there.
The lesson I would offer is simple: do not wait until your body forces you to ask what your life is costing you.
Two and a half years on, I have found myself. Not a completely new Jane, but a truer one.
The heart episode did not give me back my old life. It gave me the opportunity to create a life that feels much more alive.