Luton Town’s Captain Lockyer describes the collapse: “Remember the thought that I could die”

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>

A collapse due to cardiac arrhythmia and a prolonged cardiac arrest within seven months – and yet Welsh defender Tom Lockyer is hoping for a return to professional football. “If there is any chance I can play again,” the captain of Premier League promotion team Luton Town explained in a TV interview more than two months after his second and life-threatening collapse in a league match, “I would love it if To do. I wouldn’t write it off just yet.”

However, the 29-year-old is aware of the lengthy rehabilitation leading to a possible happy ending 2.0: “It is still far too early to say anything about a comeback or even a time before that. First and foremost, only the doctors on our medical staff and other medical specialists make decisions about me. A lot of research and testing will have to take place.”

The Luton Town captain was dead for almost three minutes

Lockyer collapsed due to cardiac arrest on the pitch during a visit to AFC Bournemouth on the third weekend of Advent. Last May, the defender collapsed on the pitch in the Premier League promotion play-off against Coventry City due to a generally less life-threatening atrial fibrillation.

In contrast to the first emergency, after which the doctors had already inserted a pacemaker into the defender, Lockyer himself found the incident shortly before Christmas, immediately after his successful resuscitation, to be highly dramatic. «When I woke up again, I immediately felt that it was different from May: then it was as if I woke up from a dream – the second time there was simply nothing. I remember the thought that I was going to die and the relief of being alive when I could speak again.”

Lockyer does not associate his own observations with the 2:40 minute cardiac arrest measured by his pacemaker during the second collapse: “I practically died, but everything related to that feels numb.” (AFP)

Source : Blick