Matthew Allick was young and healthy man who lived a very active life — so no one expected what happened next.
One ordinary day, the 42-year-old suddenly collapsed, and for ten terrifying minutes, he was clinically dead.
It all began in August 2023, when Matthew Allick, a father of two from Britain, noticed his feet swelling and struggled to catch his breath. At first, he brushed it off— but one day at work, he suddenly couldn’t make it up a single flight of stairs.
”At the time, I wasn’t in pain,” he told Metro. ”But I knew something was wrong.”
A coworker called an ambulance, and once he arrived at the hospital, a doctor asked Matthew to rate his pain from one to ten.
”I told him 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.””
Once there, a doctor asked Matthew to rate his pain from one to ten. ‘I told him 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.”‘”
Doctors soon discovered that Matthew had an irregular heartbeat and that his heart had actually stopped, triggered by dangerous blood clots in both his heart and lungs. A pulmonary embolism caused him to go into cardiac arrest.
Matthew was dead for ten minutes before hospital staff managed to revive him. He then slipped into a coma, only to wake up three days later.
When the 42-year-old finally came to, he described a peaceful sensation.
”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.”
But that calm quickly gave way to fear — he couldn’t move his body and worried he might be paralyzed. Slowly, feeling returned to his toes and fingers, little by little.
Recovering his memory proved another challenge. Matthew struggled to remember people’s names and even identify colors. ”My brother brought me an orange, and I said, what colour is that?” he recalled. ”But he spent time with me getting me to recite movie quotes to regain my memory.”
Over time, he had to re-learn basic movements: sitting up, walking, and even controlling his bladder.
The news that he had suffered a heart attack came as a shock. “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?'”
Doctors still don’t know why it happened. Matthew was healthy — young, not overweight, a non-smoker, and not an alcoholic — yet doctors are still investigating why the heart attack happened.
Matthew’s survival was so unlikely that doctors nicknamed him the “miracle man.”
His ordeal also made him realize the life-saving power of blood transfusions. Matthew, a Black heritage patient, learned that receiving blood matched to his ethnicity had been critical to his survival.
He lost a significant amount of blood during the ordeal, and he believes he wouldn’t be here today without transfusions.
Now, Matthew is about 75% back to normal, though he still has ups and downs. He still experiences occasional chest pains and swelling in his feet, which sometimes makes him worry the heart issues might be returning.
The father of two, who now works as a motivational speaker, knows he’ll never be fully “back to normal,” as he will need to stay on blood thinners for life. But he is grateful for the support of his fiancée, children, family, and friends.
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