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Max George has spoken about his terrifying health ordeal in his first interview post-heart surgery.
The Wanted singer, 36, was rushed to A&E last month and later had a life-saving pacemaker fitted.
Thankfully, he was discharged from hospital in Manchester before Christmas and is now at home, recuperating with his family by his side.
But it certainly hasn’t been an easy road, as Max now reveals that it’s thanks to his mum’s quick thinking that he’s even alive at all.
Speaking to The Sun, Max recalled waking up with blue hands on December 11 while staying at his mum Babs’ house, having just returned from a tour in America.
‘I hadn’t been feeling myself for a few days; I started feeling a bit rough,’ he said, adding that he ‘couldn’t put [his] finger on’ why he felt so ‘lethargic’.
Initially, Max ‘didn’t think it was anything serious.’
‘Luckily I’d gone around to my mum’s to stay, and I woke up, and I remember looking at my hands, and they were blue, and my arms were a grey colour, and I was freezing cold. I struggled to even sit up in bed.’
Max managed to get himself downstairs to check his blood pressure using a monitor kept by his healthcare worker mother, 63.
When he noticed his blood pressure was ‘pretty low’, as was his pulse, he clocked that ‘something wasn’t right’.
‘As I did that, my mum came through the door, and she gasped,’ he said.
‘She said, “What’s wrong? You’re blue. I need to ring the doctor now”.’
Babs drove Max to see his GP, who sent him home after a check-up.
Certain that something was seriously wrong, Babs instructed Max to call one of their doctor friends, who told him to go to A&E straight away.
‘At this point, I had a panicky feeling but was also just absolutely knackered,’ Max remembered.
‘I couldn’t move my arms, and the worst feeling was I felt like my throat was closing up.
‘It felt like someone had their hands around my neck.’
Praising his mum, he declared: ‘Thank God I stayed at Mum’s house — she saved my life.’
Upon arriving at the hospital, Max was taken to the cardiology ward, where doctors said he might need a pacemaker implantation. As per the NHS, the device sends electrical pulses to the heart to keep it beating regularly and not too slowly.
During his stint on the ward, Max noticed he was the youngest patient there by at least 30 years.
Fearing he would die in the operating theatre, he even wrote out a will so his loved ones could take care of his assets should the very worst happen.
He said the news that the bottom part of his heart wasn’t working made him realise what his responsibilities are, both to his young family members, such as nephews and girlfriend Maisie Smith.
His operation took three hours in total but wasn’t without complications due to collapsed veins caused by his condition.
But thanks to medical professionals, Max is now on the mend and previously described his pacemaker as ‘the best Christmas present’.
Sharing a photo on Instagram of his chest scar, the Glad You Came hitmaker said of the nurses and surgeons: ‘I owe everything to them.’
The singer still has a ‘few more tests’ remaining for ‘inflamed lymph nodes’ on his lungs, but assured fans it will ‘be easy work’.
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