Andy Wheeler

Andy Wheeler is an author and founder who provides practical recovery guidance and lived-experience support for people preparing for or recovering from heart attacks and open-heart bypass surgery.

He began this work after suffering a Widowmaker heart attack and undergoing a full triple bypass open-heart surgery in 2025; during his hospital stay he started blogging to record the day-to-day realities and questions that clinical care did not answer. Waking with hallucinations and facing intense emotional turmoil convinced him many patients leave hospital unprepared, so he turned those daily notes into a recovery journal and then a book. That direct, bedside-to-publication pathway is the origin of his recovery platform.

His credibility is grounded in authorship and publishing experience plus lived experience of major cardiac surgery. He is the author of Beating the Odds, which was published in 2026, and he founded My Heart Recovery Coach after his 2025 cardiac event. He is based in South Wales near Cardiff and brings a background of ten years in children’s publishing with over 1,000 authors served to his communication work.

Day to day he creates patient-facing content, speaks at events, accepts podcast invitations, and oversees development of a companion app designed to extend support to a full year after surgery. His primary audiences are people preparing for open-heart or bypass surgery, recent heart attack survivors, and their carers. Deliverables include the book Beating the Odds, daily app check-ins and a moderated online community alongside separate author services and publishing consultancy work.

His central argument is that clinicians can fix the heart but rarely prepare patients for the emotional and cognitive fallout of major surgery; recovery must be reframed as rebuilding confidence and restoring quality of life rather than merely surviving an operation. He positions lived experience as a vital complement to clinical guidance and designs practical, staged sequences of support that patients can follow. He also highlights post-bypass cognitive effects often called "Pump Head" and seeks to normalise those conversations alongside clinical rehab guidance.

As a podcast guest, Andy Wheeler tells candid, moment-by-moment stories from his Widowmaker event and triple bypass, explains the unexpected cognitive and emotional effects patients face, and outlines concrete staged recovery actions listeners can use. He brings book excerpts, app insights and the perspective of collaborating with an NHS cardiac rehabilitation specialist to the conversation. Audiences get reassurance, tactical next steps and clear resources they can follow after an episode.