Jeremy Clarkson had a stent fitted following a "sudden deterioration" in his health that doctors said left him "maybe" days away from dying.
Jeremy Clarkson had a stent fitted after suffering a blocked artery
The 'Clarkson's Farm' star, 64, has revealed he underwent a heart procedure after he started feeling "weak" while on vacation and could barely swim or walk up the stairs.
Writing in his column for The Sunday Times newspaper, he said: "It wasn’t far, maybe the length of two swimming pools. But when I finally reached the beach, there was more water in my lungs than there is in Lake Superior, and I was mostly dead.”
He insisted: "I’m not exaggerating. These problems all manifested themselves in one day.”
Upon returning to the UK, he noticed a tingling sensation in his arm and "tightness" in his chest whilst working on his Cotswolds farm, and subsequently underwent a procedure to clear his blocked arteries.
The ex-'Top Gear' host explained how he sought medical attention at a hospital in Oxford after former SNP leader Alex Salmond passed away following a heart attack on October 12.
An ECG ruled out a heart attack, but if he hadn't sought medical help, he might not have made it, with the TV star admitting: “Crikey, that was close.”
Jeremy said: “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.
“So he made a hole in my wrist, inserted his Dyno-Rod equipment and went in for a closer look. The question was this. Were the arteries so ruined that I’d need an emergency heart bypass? Or could he use his Dyno-Rods and some ultrasonic battering rams to loosen them up before inserting a stent?”
He added: “But it took two hours and at one point it felt like he’d put a Hoover pipe up my arm, along with a pile driver, and was busy inside my heart with a B and Q chisel and hammer gift set. It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd.”
The 'Grand Tour' star previously suffered a health scare in 2017 when he was hospitalised while on vacation in Majorca and battled a severe case of pneumonia.
It prompted him to take better care of his health and cut back on smoking.
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