After returning from Kenya in January 1992, where I had been visiting my sister Pauline, I noticed that I was unduly tired and my ankles were swollen. I dealt with a large backlog of letters and reports and then decided to complete a study I was undertaking to find out how many of the 202 young people injecting heroin in the central Dublin and Dun Laoghaire study in 1982/83 were positive for the AIDS virus.

On the afternoon of 5 February I went to the Virus Laboratory at University College, Dublin, in Belfield, to obtain reports on the blood tests for HIV infection of those in the study. Helen, the technician whom I wished to see, was out at lunch, so I went for a walk in the university grounds. It was cold and the rain was pouring down. While walking, I developed a severe pain in my chest, just beneath the sternum. I suspected that the pain was caused by angina or perhaps a heart attack. I walked slowly back to the laboratory, sat down, and asked for a glass of water. Over twenty to thirty minutes the pain subsided. I hoped it was perhaps just a severe attack of indigestion and fooled myself that it might have been due to an excess of hot mustard on my dinner the night before.

I considered going to the nearest hospital, St Vincent's, for a cardiograph, but decided against it because the pain had by now subsided and, no doubt, because I did not wish to accept that I had heart trouble. During the following few days, after walking two or three hundred yards, I experienced pain in my chest and a similar pain awoke me two or three times in the middle of the night. On 13 February, I phoned the cardiologist Risteard Mulcahy, a close friend, and asked if he would see me. He arranged an appointment for me five days later. I think I made light of the pain.