Queen's Brian May rushed to hospital after heart attack
25 May 2020, 17:15 | Updated: 25 May 2020, 19:10
Brian May has confirmed he suffered a heart attack and is recovering from surgery.
The Queen guitarist, 72, was recovering from a ripped muscle he injured while gardening when the heart attack occurred.
Brian May released a detailed video on his Instagram page today (May 25) detailing the bizarre chain of events that led to his hospitalisation.
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Speaking to his fans, he started the clip by saying: "I told you I had a ripped muscle and that was the way I was diagnosed and we thought it was like a bizarre gardening accident... I kind of forgot anything to do with the bum people find amusing... but anyway, it turned out to be not really the case.
He went on to say that while he was diagnosed with a rip in his gluteus maximus, he couldn't understand why after a week he was still in so much pain.
"I mean real agony," Brain said. "I wanted to jump at some points. I could not believe the pain. And people are saying 'that's not like a ripped muscle', so eventually I had another MRI.
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The scan showed he had a compressed sciatic nerve which "felt like someone had been putting a screwdriver in my back the entire time. It was excruciating...."
While recovering from his nerve and muscle damage, Brian then suffered another medical problem.
'So that's one side of the story, and I'm a lot better now. I'm free of that terrible pain that actually destroys your mind..." he said.
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'But the rest of the story is a little more bizarre. I was shocked, I thought I was a healthy guy. Everyone says I've got a great blood pressure and I keep fit, I bike, good diet.
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'I had - in the middle of the whole saga of the painful backside - I had a small heart attack. I say small, it's not something that did me any harm. It was about 40 minutes of pain in the chest and tightness. It's that feeling in the arms and sweating.
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'And you kind of know, you've heard things and you think "this is a heart attack". To cut a long story short, my wonderful doctor drove me to the hospital himself and I had an angiogram'.
The results were that the guitarist had three arteries that were "congested and in danger of blocking the blood to my heart."
Despite feeling pressure to have open heart surgery, Brian opted to have three stents put in and felt immediately better when he came round.
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"I couldn't feel they had been in here. I couldn't feel anything and I still can't, it's been amazing.
"It's an incredible operation done by the right skilful person and I thank them from the bottom of my heart," he said.
Brian said he was "very near death" and urged anyone over the age of 60 to have an angiogram - an X-ray used to examine blood vessels - as "what seems to be a very healthy heart may not be".
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He finished by telling his fans: "I'm very grateful that I now have a life to lead again. I was very near death because of this, but the pain that I had was from something very different. It's funny how these things work.
"But I'm good. I'm here. And I'm ready to rock. Please don't send me sympathies, because I'm good. God bless."
