Yahoo News Martin Roberts ‘been given second chance' at life after emergency heart op
Martin Roberts has revealed the terrifying story behind his recent emergency heart surgery, saying he has "been given a second chance".
The Homes Under The Hammer presenter revealed last month that he had been in hospital having fluid drained from his heart in an emergency medical dash that had seen him with potentially hours left to live.
Read more: Martin Roberts watched doctors save his life during emergency heart surgery
Now, Roberts, 58, has opened up to The Sun about what happened during the scary hours around his procedure.
The dad-of-two said: "I feel so very lucky to be here. I could have died but I’m here. I’ll never be the same person again."
He told how he had been feeling breathless and exhausted in the days leading up to going into hospital, even planning his day to make sure he didn't need to go back upstairs at any point as he found it too tiring.
But by the time Roberts eventually visited hospital, his heart was being squeezed by a build-up of fluid around it and his liver and kidneys were working at just 30%, leaving him hallucinating and writing jumbles of letters as he tried to fill in hospital forms.
Roberts says he was seen within seconds of arriving at A&E, adding "they weren’t even sure I would make it from A&E to the operating theatre".
He was awake and told to look away as doctors drained a litre of fluid from the sac around his heart under local anaesthetic.
Long-running TV host Roberts said he was determined to make it to 20 years of presenting Homes Under The Hammer, an anniversary coming up next May.
But he added that he planned to slow down and take more time off to spend with family, saying: "I can’t and don’t want to return to the frantic life I led before. I’ve been given a second chance and I don’t intend to waste it."
The kind star recently drove a van load of medical and food supplies to Ukrainian refugees at the Poland-Ukraine border just weeks before his health drama.
He said: "It could have happened on a roadside in Poland or near the Ukraine border. Something could have gone wrong with the surgery and left me with a different life to the one I have."
Roberts revealed he had been listening a lot to Baz Luhrmann’s song Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) since his heart problems and had found the lyrics inspiring.
Before his trip to deliver supplies to refugees, Roberts had been left in tears at the frustration of not being allowed to buy multiple bottles of Calpol at Costco for Ukrainian children.
However, he said that his brush with illness had made him less tolerant of "pettiness" and on a recent trip to Lidl where he had been told by a security guard not to take his basket to his car, he "wanted to cry and shout and tell him it didn’t matter, that I’d nearly died, and when that kind of thing happens it changes you, but I didn’t".
Watch: Martin Roberts updates on health condition
