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‘It just appeared’: Lisa Curry reveals shock health diagnosis

Lisa Curry with daughter Jaimi Kenny, who died in 2020.

Lisa Curry with daughter Jaimi Kenny, who died in 2020.

Australian swimming legend Lisa Curry has opened up on her shock health diagnosis – revealing she has had two hospital stays this year.

Former Olympian Curry, 60, said she had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a heart condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate.

“I have been in hospital twice this year with a little bit of AF. I don’t know where I have got that – it has just appeared. The doctors say I need to be weaned off alcohol and coffee, and that is hard,” she told the Seven Network’s The Morning Show on Tuesday.

“It’s when your heart’s racing for now reason. I’m now on beta blockers, which make you tired, so there is a lot going on.”

The Heart Foundation says atrial fibrillation is a type of arrhythmia in which the heart beats irregularly and often fast. It reduces the heart’s ability to pump blood properly and increases the chance of a blood clot forming, and travelling up to the patient’s brain, where it can cause a stroke.

Commons symptoms include breathlessness and faintness, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, racing heart (palpitations), tiredness or weakness, chest discomfort and difficulty exercising.

It is usually treated with lifestyle changes, medication and, sometimes, surgery.

Curry said her diagnosis followed a particularly busy period

“Because this year has just been hectic, it has been crazy, and when I started writing down all the things I had done this year, no wonder I’m exhausted,” she said

Curry told the show she had recently visited Broken Hill, to donate swimsuits from her eldest daughter Jaimi Kenny.

Ms Kenny, the eldest daughter of Curry and her first husband Grant Kenny, died at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital in 2020 after a long health battle and complications from an eating disorder.

Curry also recently spread some of Ms Kenny’s ashes at Mount Kosciuszko, saying it was “the closest to heaven I could get”.

“I have done a lot of special things this year for myself for my own healing, for Jaimi, taking her ashes to Mount Kosciuszko, and it has been a really big year,” she said.

Her diagnosis with atrial fibrillation followed that trip.

“You know what? Done! That is my year, done! I have had a good year, but the thing is, everyone has a story. Everyone has ups and downs in their lives and everyone has victory, defeat, and everyone has sorrow, tragedy, trauma, happiness,” she said.

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