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Grieving mom hospitalized with rare ‘broken heart syndrome’ after veteran son’s suicide
A distraught mother who thought she was having a heart attack was instead hospitalized with broken heart syndrome — otherwise known as takotsubo syndrome (TTS) — less than a year after her veteran son tragically took his own life.
Dawn Turner, 57, of the U.K., lost her son in August of last year.
Just last month, the mom of three awoke with “unbearable” chest pains, she said — and called an ambulance, worried she was going into cardiac arrest. But when she arrived at the hospital, doctors told her she was suffering from the effects of grief caused by a broken heart, as news agency SWNS reported.
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TTS is a temporary, reversible heart condition often triggered by extreme emotional or physical stress, such as grief, fear or severe illness, according to experts.
Symptoms usually mimic a heart attack, with sudden and severe chest pain and shortness of breath the most common — and it primarily affects women over the age of 50.
Turner, of Eckington in Worcester, said, “I was [sitting] downstairs earlier that night and thought I had a bit of indigestion. I went to bed and just couldn’t get comfortable — I was breaking out in a sweat and had heart palpitations.
“Then, around midnight, I had pain down my arm and in my jaw. I was still putting it down to indigestion … My partner Paul asked me if I was all right, and I said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.'”
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She said she couldn’t catch her breath — “and my heart felt as though it was missing a beat and then [started] thudding again. For those moments, I truly believed I was having a heart attack.”
She said her partner called emergency services, and an ambulance arrived within five minutes.
“They came in and linked me up to an ECG. They said, ‘Your heart is all over the place — there’s an extra beat, and it’s all over the place,’” she said, as SWNS reported.
Turner was rushed to the hospital by ambulance.
In emergency care, Turner was also given blood tests.
She added, “They came back and said I didn’t have the enzymes produced from a heart attack in my blood. But they said there [was] something going on.”
After undergoing more tests and seeing a cardiologist, Turner was told she had takotsubo syndrome.
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“I told [the doctor] that my heart feels broken. I told her about [my son] Rob, and she said it’s exactly that. She said it’s a real thing, and that I’d been under so much stress. The body can only take so much, and the grief and the stress can be quite physical.”
Turner’s son committed suicide in August 2025 after struggling to get help with his mental health.
He spent 10 years in the Royal Horse Artillery after joining in 2006, when he worked as an artilleryman.
He did two tours of duty in Afghanistan, she said, and returned to civilian life in 2016 before suffering several worsening health conditions.
Turner, who is also the CEO of a veterans charity called Stepway, “When he left the army, he got married, and they settled down in London. He walked straight into a job as a delivery driver. But then his health took a downward spiral, and he started having digestive troubles.”
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He was eventually told he had PTSD — but those symptoms may be similar to those of mild traumatic brain injury, Turner said.
“He was deaf in one ear from using the guns,” she said. “He realized he was putting so much pressure on his marriage, so he moved back up with me. He started to build himself up — then COVID hit.“
Turner said there were unfortunate delays as her son tried to get access to various services and facilities.
“When people lose loved ones, you’re obviously distraught, but you eventually find closure,” she said, per SWNS. “I found peace when I lost my sister in 2015. But with Rob, I can’t find closure because there’s no justice there.”
Turner is now on the mend and hopes to be fully recovered in a couple of weeks, SWNS reported.
“Until that moment, I had never really understood that a person could become so overwhelmed by stress and grief that it physically affects the heart,” she shared. “Broken heart syndrome can look and feel like a heart attack. It was a warning sign for me, and for anyone. It can change the shape of one of your heart chambers … it can cause some serious damage.”
She added, “The cardiologist told me that thankfully, my heart itself is healthy and there was no damage, but that it will take around two weeks to a month for my heart to reboot itself.”
Turner was told she needed to rest, seek counseling and make lifestyle changes to reduce stress.
“Things have settled down, and I’m taking things easy — I’m pacing myself now, and I feel a lot better. Paul said, ‘Maybe the extra beat is for Rob. You are carrying on living for him.'”
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Turner said, “That broke me and healed me a little bit all at once.”
Fox News Digital previously reported that broken heart syndrome, which causes the heart to temporarily weaken, has been linked to the brain’s reaction to stress, as studies have found.
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In an article published in the European Heart Journal in March 2019, Swiss researchers said they found that the syndrome is linked to the way the brain communicates with the heart.
Caused by intense emotional events, TTS is a rare, temporary condition that weakens the left ventricle and disrupts its normal pumping function.
The syndrome causes the heart’s main pumping chamber to change shape and get larger. The heart muscle becomes weaker, and its pumping action loses strength.
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Symptoms include sudden, intense chest pain, pressure or heaviness in the chest, along with shortness of breath.
It is treated with beta blockers and blood-thinning medicine to reduce risks of clots and other flareups.
Cameras showed former New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch in the team’s draft room Thursday night during the first round.
At one point, Tisch was seen standing near Giants head coach John Harbaugh. Despite no longer holding a majority stake in the NFL franchise, Tisch remains the Giants’ chairman of the board.
ESPN obtained an NFL memo last month detailing plans by Steve Tisch and his siblings to transfer their stake in the Giants to trusts for their children.
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“Prior transfers to these Trusts were completed pursuant to 2023 and 2024 Finance Committee approvals,” the memo stated. “The Sellers now propose to transfer their entire remaining interests, totaling 23.1% of the Club, to the Trusts. … Following the transactions, the Sellers will no longer own any interest in the Club.”
It was not clear if the transfer requests were in any way related to Tisch’s name appearing in the Epstein files released by the U.S. Justice Department in January. Tisch’s name came up more than 400 times in the files. Tisch at the time said he knew Epstein but denied visiting Epstein’s island.
As for draft night, the Giants made what some viewed as an unconventional pick at No. 10, selecting offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa.
Before that, the Giants added another piece to their pass rush, selecting hybrid edge/off-ball linebacker Arvell Reese at No. 5.
Reese earned All-American honors at Ohio State and finished his first season as a full-time starter with 6.5 sacks.
Reese is set to join a pass rush that includes Brian Burns, Abdul Carter and, likely, Kayvon Thibodeaux.
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Everybody knew about the tragic auto accident and the follow-up a year later, but when it came to Rueben Bain’s draft status, people said, “No worries.” His arms are short, but he’s really good, so the refrain remained: “No worries.”
Why then did Rueben Bain slide to the middle of the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday?
Whoever said neither issue would cause Bain to fall out of the Top 10 was obviously wrong.
He fell to the No. 15 overall selection held by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
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And judging by Bain’s demeanor during his post-draft interview on ESPN, he wasn’t thrilled about it.
“I know I’m the best in the country, I’m sure,” an unsmiling Bain told ESPN’s Laura Rutledge after his selection. “That’s how I think of myself.
“I’m telling you I can do anything I put my mind to because of my mindset. I know when I get to this next level I’m going to pop it. “
The Buccaneers selected Bain to be their outside rusher complement to Vita Vea on the interior.
The Bucs thus get the ACC defensive player of the year and a consensus All-American.
But they also get a player that multiple other pass-rush needy teams passed up. The New York Jets took TCU’s David Bailey with the No. 2 overall selection and the New York Giants picked Arvell Reese in the No. 5 slot.
Bain was not only the 15th player taken overall but the third edge defender. That’s considered great by any standard. But it’s a disappointment to Bain and changes the narrative on him somewhat.
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“He’s got to prove himself and beat the odds and prove he can get it done in the NFL,” draft guru Mel Kiper said on national TV.
Interestingly, most of the coverage of Bain’s slide focused on the short length of his arms.
Melvin Ingram once upon a time measured in with arms the spanned 31 1/2 inches. And although that is considered short, Ingram turned into a good player. He played 12 seasons and made three Pro Bowls.
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But Bain’s arms measured in at 30 7/8 inches, and that is extremely short. Indeed, it is the third-shortest arm length of any DE ever to participate in the combine.
So, is that the reason Bain dropped out of the Top 10?
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Or is it his driving troubles and the manner in which he addressed those with teams?
Bain, you should know, was driving in March of 2024 when he hit another car on South Florida’s I-95 in the 4 a.m. hour and set off a chain reaction — hitting an eastside concrete wall and then careening all the way across the highway to the westside concrete barrier — that eventually left passenger Destiny Betts in a coma.
Betts, who had not been wearing a seatbelt, died three months later from complications of her blunt force trauma injuries.
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Bain was charged but cleared of careless driving because, in part, the traffic homicide investigator said he received the final report after Bain had already paid his citation.
NFL teams were aware of all this, plus an ensuing accident the player had in October 2025, for which he was also charged with careless driving.
To make matters more dicey, Bain declined to be fully transparent about the accidents with some NFL teams he met with starting at the NFL combine. That disappointed at least one team, an evaluator on that team told OutKick.
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Bain also declined to discuss the matter on Wednesday in front of reporters.
The Buccaneers, however, feel good about Bain, his short arms and his questionable driving.
“We’ve known about this a long time,” said general manager Jason Licht. “I know it just came out a couple of weeks ago. It was a very tragic accident. Tragic experience for the family. And it’s something you never want to see happen.
“But he’s a good person who was involved in something that, you know, none of us ever want to be involved in and never want any of our loved ones involved in. But he loves football. He loves football.”
Fernando Mendoza shared the moment of being selected first overall in the NFL Draft with his family from home on Thursday night.
He was seen hugging his family, including his mother Elsa Mendoza, in a moment of celebration.
Despite being projected to be the first overall pick, Mendoza skipped the in-person draft in Pittsburgh to stay in Florida with his mother, who battles multiple sclerosis (MS) and is bound to a wheelchair.
Mendoza told reporters after he was drafted that he decided not to go to Pittsburgh to make it easier for his mother to travel to Las Vegas tomorrow when he visits his team.
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When Mendoza was only about 4 years old, his mother was diagnosed with the disease. It is a chronic, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that can affect the brain and spinal cord. She has spent the last few years in a wheelchair.
Elsa Mendoza wrote about the experience in a 2015 letter to her sons that was published in The Players Tribune.
“I was diagnosed about 18 years ago, but of course you never knew that. You and Alberto were so young, and I was doing fine… and mostly I didn’t want you to worry. It just felt like this impossible thing to place on you guys. On my sweet boys. And then I kept doing fine until about 10 years ago, when we went skiing and I broke my ankle and knee,” she wrote.
“But even after that, I wasn’t quite ready to tell you — only that my leg hadn’t healed all the way, which is why your mom had her limp. It wasn’t until five years ago, when I got Covid, that things started to go downhill in a way where there was no more hiding it. It was during football season, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel. And the thought of you wondering if I supported you any less, because suddenly I wasn’t at your games? I hated that. So that’s when I knew we had to sit you and your brother down.”
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She went on to recall, “how hard of a conversation it ended up being. ‘Your mom has this degenerative disease… and while we don’t know how it will progress, it’s going to start to affect us in a few ways. But it won’t affect us in the ways that matter. We’ll have each other, and love each other, and be there for each other. I promise.'”
Both of Mednzoa’s parents grew up in Miami, Florida, as the children of Cuban refugees who fled communism after Fidel Castro rose to power in the country.
Mendoza’s father, Fernando Mendoza Sr., was a rower at Brown University and a 1987 Junior World Championships gold medalist.
But Mendoza’s father also played football when he was younger, and was teammates with Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High School during the 1980s. Mendoza would go on to defeat his father’s former teammate in this year’s CFP national championship game.
Meanwhile, his mother played tennis at the University of Miami.
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Former Giants co-owner Steve Tisch seen in team’s draft room
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