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Wife loses rugby playing husband and son to ARVC

Stephanie Hunter speaks with John Inverdale about losing her rugby playing husband and teenage son to the heart disease ARVC.

Stephanie Hunter lost her husband Howard, 32, when he collapsed during rugby training, playing for amateur side ‘Esher’ in Surrey, coincidentally alongside ѿý Sport presenter John Inverdale.

Eleven years later in 2004, Stephanie’s son Sebastian, a budding rugby player himself, died aged 15 from the same condition as his father.

Stephanie remembers the evening in October 1993 when the heart condition Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy’ (ARVC) ended the lives of her husband and son.

“Sebastian went off to play rugby and I got a phone call from a mother of a friend of Sebastian’s and it was exactly the same thing, I knew Sebastian was going to die” said Stephanie.

“It was obviously a genetic thing [..] he died in the same way as Howard.”

“It’s not meant to happen, your children are meant to outlive you aren’t they?”

“We’ve got this horrible void to live with, he should be with u.s”

ARVC is a heart muscle disease that can cause life-threatening heart rhythm abnormalities and, in some cases, significant ‘weakening’ of the right side of the heart. More information relating to the disease can be found at http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/arvc/

This clip is from 5 live Sport on Tuesday 19 May 2015.

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4 minutes

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