Growing up, she enjoyed a normal life with her mum and brother in Surrey, but at 18, she found the simplest task left her exhausted.

“My heart would feel like it was trying to escape from my chest, even when I was sitting down or lying in bed,” she recalls.

One morning in the summer of 2014, the vice-like grip in Steffi’s heart became unbearable and she was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

“I was 18 and being told my heart was failing because of a condition I could barely pronounce, let alone heard of,” says Steffi.

“I was screaming at the doctors, ‘I should be going to a party, not being stuck in a hospital. This can’t be happening to me - I’m healthy and young.”

Since her diagnosis, the junior project manager with British Gas, admits she doesn’t fit the stereotype of a typical heart patient and often has to deal with the negative attitudes of others.

“I still go travelling occasionally, but almost always have a bad experience when airport security staff look at my pacemaker card and say, ‘You look very young,’ and everyone in the queue is looking at me suspiciously. “

Now Steffi is sharing her story as part of Cardiomyopathy UK’s Heart Bleeps campaign to dispel the public misconception of what a ‘typical heart patient’ looks like.

Cardiomyopathy UK President, Professor Perry Elliot, says: “We need to turn the tide that cardiomyopathy only affects only affects older people with unhealthy lifestyles when it affects hearts of all different shapes and sizes.”