I hallucinated and was hours from death before docs drained my body, reveals Homes Under the Hammer star Martin Roberts
TV viewers are used to seeing Martin Roberts looking on the bright side.
On Homes Under The Hammer he always finds something positive to say, even when faced with the worst wreck of a building.
But the eyes well up as he talks about his incredible brush with death after heart failure last month.
For hours, his life was ebbing away in hospital as blood drained from his heart and vital organs, due to a build-up of fluid in the sac around the heart.
As he recovers at his seaside holiday cottage in Devon, 58-year-old Martin has told exclusively of how surgeons brought him back from the brink of death — and forced him to change his life.
He said: “I feel so very lucky to be here. I could have died but I’m here.
“I’ll never be the same person again.
“I like being on the go, I’ve been presenting Homes Under The Hammer for 19 years and I’m determined to make it to 20, next May.
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“There are still so many things I want to achieve, but I know I have to take things slowly from now on.
“I can’t and don’t want to return to the frantic life I led before. I’ve been given a second chance and I don’t intend to waste it.”
Just two months ago Martin was in Ukraine delivering surgical heart monitors to medics on the front line of the war.
He said: “It seems a weird coincidence I’d need similar equipment just a short while later. I’ve thought a lot about how lucky I am.
Hugely inflamed
“It could have happened on a roadside in Poland or near the Ukraine border. Something could have gone wrong with the surgery and left me with a different life to the one I have.
“I guess I could look at it that I’m unlucky it happened in the first place but that’s not how I’m choosing to see it. I’ve got another shot and I don’t intend to waste it.”
Over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, symptoms which Martin had been experiencing for weeks came to a head, and he said: “I’ve had asthma since I was a child, but I couldn’t catch my breath, no matter how many times I used my inhaler.
“I felt like my chest was heavy and I was so exhausted. I’d spent the previous week or so planning my day to make sure I only had to come downstairs once in the morning and go back up in the evening, as every time I climbed the stairs I’d be exhausted and out of breath at the top.”
He asked Kirsty, his wife of 12 years, to take him to the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Martin said: “I thought it would be packed on a bank holiday weekend and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.
“I’d used Google and searched things myself and thought it might be long Covid but it was getting worse.
“I was hallucinating and I couldn’t write things down properly.
“Letters would be in the wrong order when I was filling in the form at the hospital.
“The wait time when we arrived was four hours but within 45 seconds of arriving, a nurse saw me, and things went fast from there.”
My heart was giving up, my kidneys and liver
were 30%, my lungs were weak. I’m so very lucky to be here. I’ve got another shot and I won’t waste it
Scans revealed a condition called pericardial effusion — Martin’s heart lining was hugely inflamed and filled with fluid that was putting pressure on his heart, literally squeezing the life out of it.
He said: “I only found out afterwards but when I went into surgery, my heart was giving up, my kidneys and liver were operating at 30 per cent and my lungs were weakening.
“I should have been on the scrap- heap, so little inside me was working as it should. I surrendered myself to the professionals and it all seemed to happen so fast there wasn’t time for me to panic.
“I was wheeled into the operating theatre by a cardiac surgeon with a life-saving bag on his back — they weren’t even sure I would make it from A&E to the operating theatre. I was given a local anaesthetic and told to look away while they inserted a tube to drain the fluid that was squeezing my heart to death.
“I remember asking the surgeon if he’d killed anyone doing that procedure and he told me he had a clean sheet and didn’t intend to change that with me.”
Martin’s condition causes symptoms such as breathlessness, tightness in the chest, light-headedness and low blood pressure.
Often it is caused by cancer or a virus, and in rare cases a bacterial or fungal infection is to blame. It is not clear what caused it in Martin’s case but doctors have ruled out cancer.
In his case it led to cardiac tamponade, where the fluid puts pressure on the heart and stops it pumping efficiently.
Dr Anu Garg, the consultant cardiologist who operated on Martin, said: “He needed pericardiocentesis surgery, where we use a needle to go in and drain the excess fluid. In some cases watchful waiting can work, where the body will take care of the issue itself. Three per cent of all autopsies show pericardial effusion, but the majority of patients I see with it have a cancer.
“Men, women, young, old — anyone can, unfortunately, be affected. While it can recur, the cause tends to dictate whether it will or not, and viral infections don’t tend to make it happen again, while cancer can.”
More than a litre of fluid was taken from the lining of Martin’s heart — and he instantly started to feel better.
He said: “The sensation of chest restriction being lifted got better with every syringe of fluid they removed.”
As he recovered in hospital, the emotional toll of his diagnosis started to hit home. He said: “My mum Margaret had a stroke when I was 20. I watched her go from someone vivacious, bubbly and outgoing to a shadow of herself.
“She lived another 20 years after her stroke but her life was never the same again. I worried that might happen to me.
“I live at 90 miles per hour. I say yes to everything, I try and solve problems, but being faced with losing your life makes you re-evaluate how you’re living it.
“It’s a cliché but lying there recovering, I knew I hadn’t made enough time to smell the flowers.
“I’ve been listening to Baz Luhrmann’s song Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) a lot since hospital and there’s the sentiment in it that it’s not the thing you worry about that will get you — ‘The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday’.
“Those lyrics describe exactly what happened to me. I’ve got a long way to go in terms of processing what happened. I’ve got three friends who have all had heart attacks though, so they’re helping me come to terms with what happened to me.”
Martin wants to spend more time with Kirsty, 53, and their children, Scott, 14, and 12-year-old Megan.
He is drawing up a list of things he wants them to do together, and said: “Kirsty told the kids I was seriously ill and they knew I wasn’t well.
“But we did downplay just how close to not being around I came. I wanted them to think I’m invincible. Every parent wants their kids to think that about them but we have had chats about what happened to me and I’ve already booked loads of things I want to do with them both.
“I thought in hospital about not being around to see Scott pass his driving test or Megan do her GCSEs so having been given another shot, I want to make more memories with them.
‘Reset opportunity’
“I’ve booked some concerts and pool lessons for me and Scott and I’m looking at more places we can travel together as a family.”
Kirsty is in full agreement and said: “We’ve been so busy the last few years, like every family with kids of school age. But it feels like we’ve had an opportunity to change things, and neither of us is going to waste it.
“Martin doesn’t stop and he hates saying no to people so he’s always really busy. But we’re in uncharted waters now. We’ve both talked about the fact we need to take more time off and spend more time together as a family.
“It’s been a really tough time but we’re not the first family to experience something like this and we won’t be the last.
“We feel fortunate we’ve had a nudge or a reset opportunity without there being any lasting damage. It’s a watershed and we’ll make the most of the second chance.”
While Martin’s brush with death has prioritised positive things in his life it has also made him less tolerant of pettiness.
He said: “I was in Lidl the other day and a security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to wheel the basket out to my car to unload it.
“He started making a fuss and normally I might have done as he asked and leave it there, but it just seemed so petty in the grand scheme of things.
“I wanted to cry and shout and tell him it didn’t matter, that I’d nearly died, and when that kind of thing happens it changes you, but I didn’t.
“I’ve had this happen to me but it shouldn’t take something this serious for us all to let go of the things that don’t matter and hold on tightly to the things that do.”
Additional reporting: CLARE O’REILLY
