Pop star Max George made a heartbreaking decision before undergoing a life-threatening procedure in hospital.
The Wanted singer, 36, woke up freezing with blue hands on 11 December and was rushed into A&E.
After doctors took a low BPM reading, they put him in a wheelchair and sent him to the cardiology ward where he received some shocking news.
Max was informed that he had a heart problem and needed a pacemaker.
The Wanted Max George feared he would die in hospital (Instagram/@maxgeorge)
Just a few days later, his heart rate dropped to 26 BPM, which is extremely low considering that the normal is between 60 and 100.
Fearing the worst before he underwent pacemaker surgery on 18 December, the music star typed out his will on his iPhone in hospital.
“Doctors asked me if I’d heard of a pacemaker as they thought I’d need one,” he told The Sun.
“They said, ‘There’s something not right with the bottom part of your heart’.
“That first night I wrote a will, I thought I was going to die.
The Wanted singer, 36, woke up freezing with blue hands on 11 December and was rushed into A&E (Instagram/@maxgeorge)
“If I could go from being absolutely on top of the world to being told ‘the bottom part of your heart isn’t working’, I kept thinking in my head, ‘Well, what if the top half stops working overnight?’
“When you get told that you really realise what your responsibilities are. I’ve got a partner, Maisie, I’ve got a family.
“I’ve got two little nephews and all of that stuff really comes to the front of it all. I was on the heart ward with about six elderly people, I was at least 30 years younger than them.”
Max’s operation took three hours and he was conscious throughout, sedated with a medication called Midazolam.
He said: “The surgery was pretty mental. It was a really odd experience.
Max said his girlfriend Maisie Smith was the first person he saw post-surgery (Instagram/@maxgeorge)
“The main problem that they had when they opened me up and were trying to put the leads in was that a lot of my veins had collapsed because my heart rate was so low and I was so dehydrated all the time. I could feel something going on, but not much.
“They finally got the leads into my veins but then they had to get a signal from the technician who has an iPad.
“The surgeon asked whether the pacemaker was working. “But the technician said, ‘No signal.’
“At that point I started thinking, ‘What’s going to happen now? Why is there no signal?’”
Thankfully the procedure was a success and Max’s pacemaker started working.
“The first face I saw was Maisie’s and I remember that being really nice — like that was the first time I actually felt like a real person again, and I had a heart,” he added.