An Abergavenny woman was forced to wait for almost two hours for an ambulance after suffering a suspected heart attack.

Mrs Valentine Walsh, 64, was doubled-over in pain last Tuesday morning with heart attack symptoms, yet says she spent one hour and 50 minutes waiting for an ambulance crew to arrive at her home at Pandy.

When emergency services finally got there, they said shift patterns could have caused the mix-up. A spokesman for the service later said that an ambulance team had in fact reached Mrs Walsh within an hour and a half.

Mrs Walsh, a fine art conservator who works extensively in London, called 999 after her heart beat raced to 170 beats per minute – a running pace – around 2am last Tuesday morning. After resolving to ‘stave it off’, she called the ambulance some four hours later.

“I realised my heart was racing, and it wasn’t good,” said Mrs Walsh.

“I told the emergency service call handler I feared I was having a heart attack. She seemed to agree as she asked if I had any aspirin?’.

“She said to ‘go and lie down, and the paramedics will be with you shortly’.”

With pulsing pains in her chest, and struggling to breathe, Mrs Walsh called her neighbour, Doug Brannock, to come and help.

“I came over and sat with Valentine. Went to the front window, kept watching and looking out for the ambulance, said Mr?Brannock.

“By ten to seven, I thought: ‘this is getting ridiculous’. So, I phoned them back and had to go through everything again.

“Then they told us they ‘were experiencing a high number of calls at the moment’. I felt like saying: it’s not my internet banking which has broken! “

“I asked how long the ambulance was likely to be and they told me that they weren’t able to say,” said Mrs Walsh.

“Just the lack of information was the worst thing. We had no assistance on the phone, or any indication as to when help would arrive. We were at panic stations, at that point.”

Mr Brannock said that he had even considered marshalling a neighbour to drive the fifteen minute journey to Nevill Hall or even to a defibrillator station in Pandy as there was no sign of help arriving.

With her still racing heart racing, and showing all the signs of a heart attack, Mrs Walsh was forced to wait until around 7.50am for an ambulance crew to arrive.

“Eventually, they arrived. The two guys were so apologetic. They’d come from Abertillery. They couldn’t stop apologising, and couldn’t believe I’d called so long ago,” she said.

Mrs Walsh was eventually taken to Nevill Hall Hospital where she said the treatment was thorough. It later emerged that, despite her serious symptoms, she had not suffered a heart attack.

The matter is now being pushed for investigation by local MP, David Davies after he was contacted by a concerned Mrs Walsh who called for the delay to be investigated.

Mr Davies said, "This was a suspected heart attack and as such, should have been a priority call. In cases like this there is an eight minute target time because any delay in providing emergency treatment will significantly reduce the chances of survival.

“It is vital that we find out why the ambulance took so long to arrive and also why a paramedic wasn’t sent. The whole point of paramedics is that they are able to attend incidents to provide emergency treatment for a patient before the ambulance arrives.

“Her neighbour telephoned several times to try and find out where the ambulance was but the call handler either couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

“Nobody is blaming the ambulance drivers themselves. I have been out with them and they are incredibly hard-working rushing from one incident to another. Something clearly went badly wrong.

“I shall be writing to the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust to ask for a full enquiry. We need to know why there was a delay, why no paramedic was sent, why the handlers did not inform the patient about the length of the clay which would have enabled them to find another way to get to the hospital.

"This was a totally unacceptable delay which could easily have had tragic consequences. The patient would have arrived more quickly had she called for a taxi or even staggered down to the Hereford Road and waited for a passing bus!

“This is completely unacceptable."

The Chronicle contacted the Welsh Ambulance Service at the earliest opportunity for a comment. This request was not met at the time of going to print.UPDATE: Friday, September 8 at 13:14pmLouise Platt, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s Assistant Director of Operations, said, “We would like to send our sincere apologies to Mrs Valentine for the wait she encountered, as it does not reflect the experience we want to provide for our patients.“We understand how difficult this must have been for her and have contacted Mrs Valentine directly so that we can look into her concerns together. In the meantime, we would like to send her our best wishes for her recovery.” A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesman, said, "We were called at approximately 6.15am on Tuesday 29 August to an address in Abergavenny. A crew in an emergency ambulance arrived at the scene in 90 minutes."Under the Trust’s new clinical response model, symptoms such as chest pains and shortness of breath, are assessed and categorised as ‘AMBER’ calls.An AMBER call is one which is considered serious, but not immediately life-threatening, and while it is not subject to a time-based response target we still aim to provide the patient with the fastest possible blue light response."For AMBER calls we are assessed on the quality and appropriateness of the clinical care provided. A cardiac arrest, where a patient’s heart suddenly stops beating unexpectedly and the patient becomes unresponsive, would be classed as a ‘RED’ or immediately life-threatening call and this type of medical emergency has a target response time of eight minutes."