Travel influencer from Lewes urges people to get symptoms checked after having heart transplant at age 24

Faye Greenwood, who is known for her travel, fashion and lifestyle content, said she suffered a heart attack while she was on holiday in Paris in July 2025.

She was there with her fiance, influencer Ailbhe Lower, who is also known as Mr Bruv.

Faye told this newspaper: “On the day of the heart attack I remember feeling very tired and sleeping for most of the day.”

But Faye said she and her partner realised something was seriously wrong.

She said: “It wasn’t just a panic attack. My partner phoned the ambulance. They arrived and thought I was just a drunk girl on holiday. I was finding it really hard to talk to them as I was in and out of consciousness. It was tricky to explain how I was feeling.”

She said she was then sat in A&E for nearly two hours, adding: “It was really scary in there and they wouldn’t let my partner in with me.”

Faye explained that she left the hospital after nobody would see her and tried to get some sleep. She said: “I woke up throwing up blood and barely being able to breathe.”

After asking the hotel concierge to call an ambulance and explain what was happening in French, Faye went back to hospital.

She said: “This time they could clearly see something was very wrong and they took me straight into surgery to fit a stent as there was a blockage in my artery, causing the heart attack. We were only verbally told it was a heart attack the next day when my partner was allowed back in to see me.”

Once she was back in the UK Faye said she waited about two weeks for a heart transplant.

The couple received a medical bill of about £14,000 from the French hospital and another for about £40,000 after Faye was flown back to England via air ambulance.

She describe the bills as ‘definitely scary’, adding: “It’s not really something you want to have on your shoulders at 24. But both me and Ailbhe have accepted it and are planning on paying it off slowly which is nice.”

Faye said life after her heart transplant was 'strange'. She said: "I felt weirdly normal considering I just underwent a life-changing surgery."

She also explained that her energy levels were low in the weeks after. She said: “I had very little strength and it was hard to move around comfortably. But on a more positive note my appetite was finally back. I felt relief and was excited to feel like myself again.

“Life is different now as I take a lot of medications, which have to be taken at certain times, fasted and some with meals. There are also foods/drinks I have to avoid all together.”

Faye said there is now ‘a lot more thinking and planning’ involved in her daily life and finds it hard to ‘do things on a whim’ because of her medications. She said her energy levels are ‘significantly lower’ than before and said: “Sometimes my mood is very unstable.”

But she added: “Really that’s not much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. I’m extremely grateful I get to carry on experiencing anything. I just take things at a slower pace now!”

Faye recommends that anyone experiencing symptoms of a possible heart condition gets them checked – ‘even if they are noticing very minimal symptoms’.

“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” she said, adding that people should not worry about ‘being dramatic’.

Faye said: “Your health is the most important thing and it’s important you advocate for yourself. There are also some amazing charities out there such as CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) who advocate for young people to have the opportunity to have heart screenings, which I think is so important. They were actually the ones who discovered my Dilated Cardiomyopathy back when I was 18, after my college held a heart screening day where CRY offered all students heart scans. I remember thinking at the time ‘eh, this is silly, I probably don’t need to be signing up for this heart scan but I might as well’. And I’m forever grateful that I did because I otherwise wouldn’t have recognised any symptoms within myself. So don’t ever think anything to do with your health is silly or a waste of time.”

Fay currently has 26.7k subscribers on her YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@fayegreenwood, 305k followers on her Instgram at www.instagram.com/fayegreenwoody and 628.3K followers on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@fayegreenwoody.

The NHS lists symptoms of a heart attack as: chest pain (a feeling of pressure, heaviness or tightness), pain in other parts of the body (pain spreading from the chest to the arms), feeling lightheaded or dizzy, sweating, shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and coughing or wheezing.