TV personality turned farmer Jeremy Clarkson had to undergo an urgent heart operation recently.
The star detailed his shocking experience, where he was “maybe” days away from passing. As a matter of urgency, he was rushed to the operating theatre and put under for two hours.
Clarkson was enjoying a dip in the Indian Ocean during a “small island” holiday when he started to feel off. His illness seemed to stick and he later found it difficult to climb stairs. Alarm bells started ringing when things began to get worse rapidly.
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The former Top Gear presenter returned to the UK where his illness progressed. He recalled how a “sudden deterioration began to gather pace.”
Clarkson’s symptoms included a “tightness in [his] chest” and he began to go “clammy.” This then turned into “pins and needles,” which were focused in his left arm. Usually ignoring such issues, Jeremy’s visit to the GP was supposedly sparked by Alex Salmond’s death from a heart attack.
He shared his experience through a column in The Sunday Times, where he described feeling “mostly dead.” After just a short swim, he felt awful. Brushing it off, he spent the rest of his holiday enjoying cheese and wine.
Back in the UK, he got back to working on the farm and noticed pins and needles in his arm as he was loading pigs into a lorry to send for slaughter. Quickly calling an ambulance, he went to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
He had an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays, all of which ruled out the possibility of a heart attack. From there, he was sent into an operating theatre on Wednesday. Doctors said he was potentially days away from an untimely end.
While in the theatre, a wire mesh tube called a stent was fitted to hold his arteries open and improve blood flow. Clarkson, however, described it as the “wearisome effects of growing old.”
“It seems that of the arteries feeding my heart with nourishing blood, one was completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way.” The procedure is intended to prevent future heart attacks by improving blood flow.
“Crikey, that was close,” was Clarkson’s main thought. He added: “It wasn't especially painful. Just odd.”
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