I’ve had life insurance and critical illness cover since my wife and I first bought a house around years ago. It’s one of those things that feels like the right thing to do at the time, but you try not to think about needing to use it.
My wife works as an administrator for a care home and has been in the care industry for her whole career. My eldest son, Jamie, is in the RAF currently serving abroad, and my 14-year-old son, Alfie, loves football and plays for our local team. Emma and I enjoy going for walks together, and I love watching football with my boys, especially when Liverpool win. You always hope that serious illness will never affect your own family, but if it does, the last thing you want to be doing is worrying about money.
I work as a site manager in the agricultural supply industry in Staffordshire. On the 20th of March this year, I went for a jog after work as I often do. I got about two streets away from my house and felt a pain in my chest, but just put it down to the cold air. The pain started to get worse though, so I made my way back home. When my youngest son, Alfie, opened the front door, I collapsed into the hallway. Luckily, my in-laws live across the street from us, so Alfie ran to find them and called 999. We were told that an ambulance wasn’t available, and they advised my in-laws to drive me to hospital.
By this point I was in so much pain I couldn’t get off the floor, so together my father in-law and neighbours managed to get me into the car and to hospital. After that, all I remember is lying in a hospital bed being told I was having a heart attack.
Within two hours I had been transferred to Royal Stoke University Hospital to have a stent fitted. The whole thing had been so surreal, and I was left wondering what on earth had just happened. I can’t imagine how my family must have felt. My wife was taken to the relatives’ room when she first got to the hospital and was told that there were no guarantees of survival. At the time, my eldest son was working in another part of the world, but the RAF were excellent and flew him home within 24 hours. It was really comforting to have him by my side and there to support my wife.
I was very surprised about how quickly critical illness cover popped into my head after the heart attack. One of the first things you think of after something like that happens is, ‘how are we going to manage financially?’ Everything is so unknown and up in the air at the time, so you do whatever you can to ease the pain.
I spent four days in hospital and as soon as I got home looked through my insurance documents. We moved our cover to Beagle Street seven years ago due to the competitive pricing of just £40.34 per month for life insurance and critical illness cover and the ease of application. The paperwork was very straightforward and clearly listed ‘heart attack’ as a covered condition for critical illness claims.
Being able to use a live chat function to contact Beagle Street was a welcome relief as it had been a very emotional few days. Within an hour of speaking to someone, I had been emailed the forms to fill out and been advised that I would be given regular updates on the progress of my claim.
After around six weeks I received £13,500 from Beagle Street and throughout the whole process I only had to answer one question.
Receiving the money was like a weight had been lifted from our shoulders. It meant we were able to pay off a few things and Emma has been able to go down to working four days a week. I was given the all-clear to fly in August, and we were able to use some of the money on a family holiday to Majorca. It was so beneficial to spend ten days of quality time together, soaking up the sun and relaxing after what had been such a stressful time for everyone.
It’s been a long recovery and I’m still not fully back to my old self over half a year later. I’m on seven tablets a day and had to have four months off work. I can still get tired quite easily but am back to working full time now.
It’s been a tough year, but we’ve got through it together and have been able to find some positives in it all. The biggest change is definitely my outlook on life. I’m a lot happier and I don’t get nearly as stressed now. I’ve also gone alcohol-free since my heart attack and really don’t miss it.
Now that I don’t go jogging anymore, Emma and I go on a lot more walks together and we’ve actually never talked as much as we do now. We look forward to it every day, just wandering through our local housing estates or through Newport town chatting about our days.
I recommend critical illness cover to everyone. You never know what’s going to happen in life. You may never use the cover and hopefully you don’t, but if you do, then that reassurance goes a long way. If we hadn't have had it, we wouldn't be where we are now.