Star of Springwatch Iolo Williams was forced to save his own life during a terrifying incident in the countryside.
The 61-year-old nature expert suffered a heart attack while out on a jog. However, he didn’t have his phone on him so he was unable to contact anyone. To make things worse, Iolo was roughly six miles away from his car when it happened.
‘It came like a bolt out of the blue’
The presenter told the Mirror that the heart attack “came like a bolt out of the blue,” explaining he felt “intense pain under my sternum.”
Due to his car being so far away, Iolo had to deal with the pain while walking back to his vehicle. Despite struggling to get back to his car, he knew it would be harder to get help if he remained where he was. When his heart condition got worse he would crouch down and recuperate.
When Iolo finally made it to his car, he phoned for an ambulance and had to wait 90 minutes for them to reach him.
His wife, Ceri, came down and drove him to the hospital where he was in the hands of the NHS, who Iolo said was “superb.”
“The doctors were as mystified as I am. I’m not overweight, I’ve never smoked, I’m a social drinker,” he explained. “So it must have been some kind of fault that was in me anyway – but then why didn’t it manifest itself earlier? I just don’t know.”
Iolo suffered another unexpected collapse
After having a stent fitted, Iolo started to film a new Springwatch series for BBC Wales. He suffered another unexpected collapse when he was about to drive to the location.
While in the passenger seat, he struggled to put his seatbelt on. Unable to communicate, he was rushed to the hospital nearby where they “injected some high-level aspirin in liquid form.”
The injection left him unable to speak for days, which doctors said was because of a clot in his bloodstream.
Iolo praises NHS
“It went around my body for six weeks and then it jammed in a blood vessel in my medulla oblongata – the left-hand side of the base of my brain. The left-hand side operates the right-hand side of your body so I was paralysed,” he explained.
Iolo stated that “luckily, the NHS jumped into action again” and he was able to use his right arm after a couple of hours. However, his speech wouldn’t return for another four or five days. Fortunately, there have been no long-term effects.
Iolo described the experience as “an out-of-body experience” and “scary” and knew it similarly impacted his family.
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