A young British man who had a heart attack in his early twenties has warned people to “be careful” because it can happen at any age.
Tom Birchy told his 152,000 followers on Tik Tok about his experience in a video that has been viewed by a whopping 1.6 million people.
The young man said he was a recreational drug user working in a “high stress job in the music industry” when it happened.
“The first thing I felt was a tingling sensation in the back of my wrist which spread down my arm and up my arm until my whole arm was kind of numb on the left and then it spread to my right and I remember being so uncomfortable it was like both my arms were super tight and then my chest went tight as well,” he said.
Mr Birchy said it “wasn’t particularly painful” but he had a “pressing fear” — an impending fear of doom.
He recalled he “couldn’t lie down or stand up” and was “thrashing around the place”.
Eventually an ambulance was called and paramedics performed an electrocardiogram (ECG) — a simple, non-invasive test that records the electrical activity of the heart.
Medics concluded Mr Birchy hadn’t suffered a heart attack but they wanted to take him to hospital for blood tests to make sure.
He told his followers he went to Leeds General Infirmary in the north of England by ambulance and had a blood test immediately at A&E.
“I remember being just sat there by myself in a normal waiting room and someone comes running to me and says ‘Right, come here’.
“They took me to a room and jabbed a thing into my stomach and at that point I was like ‘Jesus Christ, why am I being injected in my stomach?’.
“I get admitted to a ward and later that evening found out that I did have a heart attack, aged 22.”
He described it as a “scary experience” and urged people to look after themselves and “be careful”.
One of his followers pointed out “anxiety attacks have the same symptoms”.
Another person concurred: “I was convinced I was having a heart attack when I had a panic attack for the first time.”
A medical worker shared that “18-25 yo cocaine users, mainly men” were a “rapidly growing population we are seeing for heart attacks”.
Others praised him for “turning his life around” and for sharing the “informative video”.