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Brian May Reveals He Recently Suffered A Heart Attack

Brian May Reveals He Recently Suffered A Heart Attack

He experienced 'about 40 minutes of pain in the chest', and was taken to hospital

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed he recently suffered a heart attack, saying in a detailed Instagram video how he experienced 'about 40 minutes of pain in the chest'.

Sharing a video to explain what had happened to him, May said he'd been having problems with what he initially thought was a 'ripped muscle'.

But while all that was going on, he also went through something even scarier - admitting later in the video that the rest of the story 'is a little more bizarre' and 'a bit more shocking'.

Saying that in the middle of all that, he had a 'small heart attack', May said: "I say small - it's not something that did me any harm. It was about 40 minutes of pain in the chest, and tightness and that feeling in the arms, and sweating."

May continued to say his 'wonderful doctor' drove him to the hospital himself and he went straight in to have an angiogram.

Medics told the musician that things were a little more complicated than they initially thought.

He added: "I actually turned out to have three arteries that were congested and in danger of blocking the supply of blood to my heart."

May said that despite some 'pressure' to have open heart surgery, he opted to have 'three stents put in', which are small tubes that help prop open an artery.

Brian May/Instagram

Earlier in the video, May gave some backstory to his health woes, saying how the heart attack had taken place 'in the middle' of problems with a compressed sciatic nerve.

He said: "I told you I had a ripped muscle - now, that was the way I was diagnosed, we thought it was like a bizarre gardening accident. I didn't realise that was amusing really.

"But anyway, it turned out to be not really the case. I had an MRI and yes, I did have a rip in my gluteus maximus and it's so easy to make a connection: 'There's a rip there so that must be the cause of the pain, end of story' [...] And no other tests were done.

Brian May/Instagram

"Now, a week later I'm still in agony. I mean real agony. I wanted to jump at some points. I could not believe the pain. And people are saying, 'That's not like a ripped muscle, you don't get that amount of pain'.

"So eventually I had another MRI, but this one I had one of the lower spine and sure enough we would discover that I had a compressed sciatic nerve, quite severely compressed, and that's why I had this feeling that someone was putting a screwdriver in my back the whole time. It was excruciating."

Thankfully, now that doctors know exactly what was causing the pain, May has been able to get the treatment he needs.

He added: "Finally we started treating the thing for what it was."

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Entertainment, Celebrity, Music