I had a heart attack and collapsed while getting ready for work – but our BATHTUB saved my life because of amazing reason
A Southport man who suffered a heart attack as he got ready for work says he wouldn’t be here today without his bathtub.
On December 17, 1992, Fred McCann, 78, was in the shower when he suffered a heart attack and collapsed.
But his life was saved after he fell at the ‘perfect angle’, meaning his chest hit the bath, a move he says ‘kickstarted’ his heart and saved his life.
‘That’s what the advisor told me [if I had landed on the bath] anything higher or lower wouldn’t have worked,” he said Liverpool echo.
32 years after his near-death experience, Fred celebrates a second birthday, or a “rebirthday,” every year on December 17, commemorating the day his bath saved his life.
“If the king can celebrate two birthdays, I think it’s only right that I should too,” he said.
Fred suffered a heart attack just weeks after experiencing chest pain.
Although he was initially told he had a hernia, Fred collapsed on the bathroom floor.
On December 17, 1992, Fred McCann, 78, was in the shower when he suffered a heart attack and collapsed. But he says his bathtub saved his life
Fred says he fell at the ‘perfect angle’ which meant his chest hit the bath – a move he says ‘kickstarted’ his heart and saved his life
He was able to call 999 and was rushed to hospital, where a doctor saw the huge bruise on his chest and told him the fall had saved his life.
Fred’s story comes as a major study recently found that people who become ill with Covid are at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Using data from more than 200,000 people from the UK with an average age of 67 who got Covid in 2020, researchers found that the sicker a person was, the more likely they were to develop heart problems.
Overall, being infected with Covid doubled a person’s risk of having a heart attack or stroke, at least three years after the initial infection.
And patients who were hospitalized because of the virus were four times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those who did not get it.
This new research comes as other doctors search for clues as to why the number of fatal heart attacks in people under 45 is increasing. Some point to the Covid virus as the cause.