‘I had 2 heart attacks at 32 after I dismissed symptoms’

A man who dismissed the warning signs of a potentially deadly heart attack, believing he was simply worn out from the gym, has opened up about his ordeal in the hope that others will not make the same error. Ryan Mickleburgh, who was aged 32 when the heart attack hit, was in the middle of a workout in March last year when he began to feel a tightness in his chest — but brushed it aside, putting it down to nothing more than exhaustion.

He soon started experiencing a series of further symptoms, and eventually discovered he had suffered not one, but two so-called ‘widowmaker’ heart attacks — a term used because of their alarmingly low survival rate – and has now come forward with his story in the hope that others will not ignore the warning signs. Sharing a video about his ordeal on TikTok, the Manchester-born chef and fitness enthusiast said: “So what’s it like having a heart attack? I’ll cut to the chase, it’s absolutely f****** horrible.

“Like, when the symptoms first started the chest became really tight. So if you go to the gym and you train your chest [and] you feel like you’ve got a pump on your chest, it was like that.

“My heart attack started during exercise, so I just felt like it was muscle fatigue, or my chest was tight. And then driving home from the gym, the next symptom was like an electric shock going down my left side, so my jaw going down into my left arm, and I still thought it was muscle fatigue. I never thought I was having a heart attack at any point.

“And then the next symptom was like, hot flushes. It’s like the symptoms, they [came] and went.”

Describing his symptoms as similar to having the flu, Ryan revealed he took a shower in a bid to sweat them out, before noticing something more alarming, reports the Mirror. “I could breathe in, but I was struggling to breathe out,” he said. “Like my lungs were collapsing.

“That was very, very scary, and I had, like, a panic attack at the same time. I’ve never had a panic attack before that, but in that moment I did.

“And so if you ever – I hope it never happens to you – but if you’re ever in a point where you’re gonna have a heart attack, those are the symptoms that start.”

He concluded by saying: “I hope that by saying what I went through, people understand what a heart attack is, because people have those symptoms and they fade off, and they just think it’s flu or muscle fatigue and it’s nothing, but it’s actually something and I want to make people aware of that.”

Ryan later discovered he had an underlying condition known as Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), commonly referred to as ‘a hole in the heart’, which medics believe may have permitted a blood clot to pass through, triggering the cardiac episode. Since his remarkable recovery, Ryan has devoted himself to raising awareness of the dangers and warning signs of heart attacks, particularly among young men.

He has praised the efforts of charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, or CRY, which provides free heart health screenings for people aged between 14 and 35. Speaking previously, he said: “I’m shocked how many young people in their twenties and thirties have messaged me saying they’ve had a heart attack. Young men are taught to push through everything – pain, stress at work or home, exhaustion.

“I was like most young men – I thought I was invincible. I shrugged off the symptoms and put it down to tiredness and fatigue, but they’re warning signs. The ‘grindset’ nearly killed me.

“If I knew there was something available like [CRY], I probably would’ve checked and they would’ve found this hole in my heart straight away.”