Bereaved woman from Oxfordshire calling for full health MOTs to detect silent conditions
Laura’s campaigning for routine medical screening after her husband passed away, only months after their wedding day
A woman from Oxfordshire is campaigning for full health MOTs to help detect silent and underlying conditions after her husband passed away.
An estimated 400,000 people in the UK have heart failure that is currently undiagnosed and it’s thought they will benefit from routine medical screening.
Laura Burr’s husband Edward passed away at 32 years old, only months after their wedding day.
Edward had dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) which was only diagnosed when he went into hospital with pneumonia and passed away weeks later.
DCM is a disease of your heart muscle which enlarges your heart’s main pumping chamber, causing the heart’s muscle wall to stretch and become thin.
Laura, from Banbury, tells us that she believes if Edward had a health check, his life could have been saved.
She said: “I was a bride and a wife at 30, now a widow at 31. Rather than planning the honeymoon of our dreams, I was planning the man of my dreams’ funeral.
“We literally had to spend the money that we'd earmarked on our honeymoon on his funeral which was seven months to the day and the hour after we got married.
“I shouldn't have to be doing that. His dad shouldn't have to be burying his son, and his grandmother should be having to bury her only grandson.”
She added: “I want to do everything within my power to make sure that nobody else has to go through what I've gone through and what are both of our families have had to go through in the last 12 months.
“I like to believe that if Eddie had a health MOT, we would have picked this up earlier and I don't see why that can't be the case for hundreds of other people.”
Mrs Burr has jointly started a petition on Change.org where she described Edward as “kind, he was accepting, he was patient, he was non-judgmental, he was a peacemaker, a joker, he was Laura’s spot squeezer, he was a Swiftie, he was a friend, a godparent, the biggest LOTR fan Laura had ever met, he was an uncle, a best friend to more people than Laura has ever known possible, he was a gamer, a thinker, a storyteller, a partner and a husband.”