Appearing on Good Morning Britain, TV personality Martin Roberts says he was rushed through A&E after suffering heart attack-like symptoms, and had fluid drained off his heart.

Credit: @GMB via Twitter

Video transcript

MARTIN ROBERTS: I'd been feeling pretty rough since I got back, as you say Richard. I don't know if it was the journey down there. But it culminated over the bank holiday Easter weekend with a real sort of tightness in my chest, and difficulty breathing, and just total lethargy.

Now, I'm aware of the sort of signs of a heart attack, which is those things, but with tingling and things. So like the bloke, I'll just make it through the weekend and make it for the weekend. By time it got to Tuesday, Wednesday, I was feeling so really that my wife took me to A&E at the Bath, RUH in Bath. And basically, I was just rushed through A&E.

And to cut a long story short, it found that I'd actually got water or liquid around my heart, which was compressing the heart to a point where at any point that it stopped. And unlike a normal heart attack, there's nothing you can do about it. You can't do the whole defibrillator sort of chest mass, because the heart itself is actually literally being strangled.

So within three or four hours, I was in the emergency operation wards having a tube put into this sac around the heart. And they drained off a liter and a half of fluid that was literally sort of strangling myself. And it's very bizarre that I was actually awake through the whole process. I kind of watched as they drew out all this effectively death-giving liquid from my chest. But I'm still here in hospital, in the RUH being looked after wonderfully by the NHS staff, of course. And literally, they saved my life, Richard.