A pensioner says he now celebrates two birthdays each year after a bath ‘saved his life’.
Fred McCann, from Southport, believes he wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for the location of his fall when he suffered a heart attack and collapsed. The retired 78-year-old was preparing for work when he had a heart attack in the shower and fell.
Luckily, when he collapsed, he fell at the ‘perfect angle’ and as he dropped his chest hit the bath, which he says “kickstarted” his heart and saved his life. To mark the day his bath ‘saved his life,’ on December 17, Fred celebrates his “re-birthday.”
He said: “32 years ago I had a heart attack, which stopped my heart. As I went down, I struck the bath in just the right place to kickstart it again.
“The consultant told me that [if I had landed on the bath] a bit higher or lower it wouldn’t have worked. So, if the King can have two birthdays, it seems only right that I should.”
Fred shared the full story behind “Margaret [his wife], the one and only love of my life, almost becoming a widow” with the ECHO. He said: “In the late 80s, I was advised that I had a hiatus hernia, which had the same symptoms as a heart attack.
“Around October 1992, I started getting these pains across my chest and rang the doctors. I was told it was my hernia acting up, I was given meds to take and I carried on working as normal.”
Five weeks before Fred suffered the heart attack, on December 17 1992, he found himself in A&E after feeling “terrible” while at work. He was told he would need his hernia operating on and was sent home.
Fred, who retired from his job at Sefton Council 17 years ago, said: “A couple of hours later [after being sent home] I had a doctor from the practice ring me and told me my blood count was so low, it was dangerous and had iron tablets sent out for me to start taking.
“They also told me I wasn’t fit to work. For four weeks, I suffered with chest pains then one day I returned home just after midnight, having been on duty [at work] seventeen hours. The pains had gotten worse and I hardly slept that night.
“Then the next morning Margaret had gone off to work and I went into the bathroom to get ready for work. Next thing I know is I’m coming round on the bathroom floor, I crawled to the phone and dialled 999, then woke our son up, who was on a late turn.
“The ambulance arrived and I was taken to A&E where I was told I’d had a heart attack. I was later told all those pains I’d had for weeks had been mini ones. The consultant, having seen the massive bruise on my chest where I’d struck the bath, told me that if I’d hit the bath any higher or lower, the thump to the chest wouldn’t have worked.”
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