‘I dropped dead. I had no pulse, no heartbeat. Nothing.’
Matthew Allick, 42, was clinically dead for 10 minutes before he came back to life. Now, he’s sharing what it’s like to recover from dying.
‘I don’t remember anything from when I was dead,’ he explained. ‘But what I do remember is coming out of the coma and it felt like I’d been sleeping. Everything was peaceful. It felt like a peaceful sleep.’
The father-of-two doesn’t exactly fit the mould when it comes to experiencing death. It’s thought that your life literally flashes before your eyes, instead he experienced nothing but calm.
His sudden death was a shock though, given that Matthew, from Romford, had been fit and healthy throughout his life.
He’d begun feeling unwell at the end of August 2023, at age 40, struggling with shortness of breath and swollen feet.
‘They would swell up and then go down the next day, so I ignored it,’ he said. ‘I put it down to doing night shifts at work, thinking I wasn’t moving enough.
‘But then I started getting out of breath doing simple tasks, like, if I stood up too quickly, it felt like I had just done a sprint.’
As someone who went to the gym and ate well, the actor and care line officer assumed his symptoms would eventually go away.
‘One Saturday I was at work and a friend said, “Let’s go look at the new coffee machine upstairs”,’ he recalled. ‘I went to take one step and thought, “I can’t climb these stairs”.’
Immediately, he asked his friend to call an ambulance. ‘At the time, I wasn’t in pain,’ he added. ‘But I knew something was wrong.’
Paramedics arrived within five minutes and decided Matthew had an irregular heartbeat. They said it was likely nothing to worry about but took him to Hammersmith Hospital as a precaution.
Once there, a doctor asked Michael to rank his pain on a scale of one to ten. ‘I told him that it had been a zero before but suddenly it was an eleven out of ten,’ Matthew said. ‘He said it couldn’t be an eleven, and I said, “Now it’s a thirteen”.’
Then, the dad simply dropped dead. He’d had a cardiac arrest caused by a pulmonary embolism.
Doctors used a defibrillator and gave Matthew CPR so aggressive that it caused internal bleeding. He was considered clinically dead for several minutes before medics resuscitated him and placed him into a coma.
Scans revealed blood clots the ‘size of a cricket ball’ on his heart and lungs, so surgeons performed several procedures in an attempt to remove them.
This included using a catheter to ‘cut away at the clots’ and multiple blood transfusions, which Matthew credits with saving his life.
His family were warned that if he ever awoke, he may be brain dead – because of the length of time his brain was deprived of oxygen. But when Matthew came to three days later, he was fully conscious, and only had issues with his memory.
It was at this moment he described feeling incredibly peaceful, as if gently awaking from a deep slumber. After a while, he became worried he was paralysed as he couldn’t move his body. But gradually, feeling in his toes and fingers started to return.
Initially, Matthew also struggled with memory – finding it difficult to get people’s names correct and even identify different colours. But over time he recovered.
‘My brother brought me an orange, and I said, what colour is that?’ Matthew explained. ‘But he spent time with me getting me to recite movie quotes to regain my memory.
‘I slowly started to return to normal. I also had to re-learn to sit up, how to walk, how to control my urine. It was a crazy journey.’
It came as a ‘huge shock’ when Matthew learnt he’d had a heart attack, and doctors were unsure of the cause.
‘I actually passed out when I learnt I had a heart attack,’ he said. ‘It just didn’t make sense. It felt like a lie. I kept thinking, “How could that happen to me?”
‘I was young, I wasn’t obese, I never smoked, I wasn’t an alcoholic. I’m actually still under investigation as the doctors don’t know why it happened.’
His doctors actually dubbed him the ‘miracle man’ because none of them had expected him to survive his ordeal.
‘I was told only 5% of people survive what I’ve been through,’ Matthew added. ‘It was all incredibly rare.’
Matthew later found out how crucial blood transfusions were to saving his life and wants to raise awareness of the importance of giving blood – especially among Black heritage communities.
According to NHS Blood and Transplant, as a Black heritage patient needing multiple blood transfusions, Matthew’s recovery chances would be improved by receiving matched blood from Black heritage donors.
An NHS spokesperson said: ‘Although the blood used to treat Matthew came from a range of donors of different ethnicities, the need for more Black heritage donors to come forward to provide ethnically matched blood is well established.’
‘Without blood transfusions I wouldn’t be here today,’ Matthew said. ‘We often don’t realise how critical blood donation is until we’re on the receiving end.’
The dad-of-two is now ‘75% back to normal’ but he has good days and bad days.
‘Sometimes I have chest pains and find that my feet swell up, and I think, “Oh no, it’s happening again”,’ he added. ‘But the great thing about Hammersmith Hospital is they’ve said to me to always come in if I’m worried, and they’ll see me straight away.
‘On my good days I’m just living normal life. I’ll never be completely back to normal as I’ll be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.’
Matthew is grateful to his fiancée, kids, family and friends who all visited him in the hospital and ‘really showed up’ for him.
‘At one point I remember doctors saying there were too many people in the room,’ he recalled. ‘It just really made me realise how lucky I am to be alive.’
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