Tom Lockyer showed off his "battle wound" and explained how the fitted defibrillator could save his life if his heart ever stopped again.
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Lockyer collapsed on the field twice in just seven months Has an Implanted Cardiac Device (ICD) fitted to his chestCould be life-saving in case of another setback on the fieldWHAT HAPPENED?
Lockyer experienced a mid-game cardiac arrest earlier in the season, during a match against Bournemouth in December, marking the second time Lockyer collapsed on the pitch within seven months, after having previously endured atrial fibrillation during the Championship play-off final at Wembley in May. He has now been fitted with an Implanted Cardiac Device (ICD) in his chest which would shock his heart into action should it stop, eliminating the need for external defibrillation and potentially saving his life.
AdvertisementWATCH THE CLIPWHAT LOCKYER SAID
Speaking to Lockyer said: "So that's my battle wound. My defibrillator sits in there, as you can see there's a wire that runs across and up to the heart in case it ever needs to go off.
"So that's constantly monitoring my heart rate and if it goes outside certain parameters then it's designed to give me a shock. That's the wire – the battery lasts about 10 years so only needs changing every 10 years and hopefully I'm never going to need it but it's there as a precaution."
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Lockyer recounted the December incident in vivid detail and insisted that he knew that the second emergency was distinctively different from the first one.
"I was running up to the halfway line and went really light-headed, thinking would be OK in a second. I wasn't and woke up with paramedics everywhere," he revealed.
"It happened in May but I knew instantly this time was different, the last time I woke up almost like from a dream and this time woke up from nothingness.
'I could see straight away, paramedics, physios, club doctors, there was more panic, I couldn't speak, couldn't move, trying to work out what was happening. While that was going on I remember thinking, 'I could be dying here'.
"It's a surreal thought to have been thinking that and not being able to move or respond, and you could see panic going on. Once I came around it was a relief I was alive and fortunate it happened where it happened, I was living it and my family almost had it worse than I have. After what happened in May I have a recording device, and two minutes 40 seconds I was out for, and had to have a defib to shock me back."
